Computing in the RAIN: a reliable array of independent nodes

The RAIN project is a research collaboration between Caltech and NASA-JPL on distributed computing and data-storage systems for future spaceborne missions. The goal of the project is to identify and develop key building blocks for reliable distributed systems built with inexpensive off-the-shelf components. The RAIN platform consists of a heterogeneous cluster of computing and/or storage nodes connected via multiple interfaces to networks configured in fault-tolerant topologies. The RAIN software components run in conjunction with operating system services and standard network protocols. Through software-implemented fault tolerance, the system tolerates multiple node, link, and switch failures, with no single point of failure. The RAIN-technology has been transferred to Rainfinity, a start-up company focusing on creating clustered solutions for improving the performance and availability of Internet data centers. In this paper, we describe the following contributions: 1) fault-tolerant interconnect topologies and communication protocols providing consistent error reporting of link failures, 2) fault management techniques based on group membership, and 3) data storage schemes based on computationally efficient error-control codes. We present several proof-of-concept applications: a highly-available video server, a highly-available Web server, and a distributed checkpointing system. Also, we describe a commercial product, Rainwall, built with the RAIN technology

Founsure 1.0: An erasure code library with efficient repair and update features

Founsure is an open-source software library that implements a multi-dimensional graph-based erasure coding entirely based on fast exclusive OR (XOR) logic. Its implementation utilizes compiler optimizations and multi-threading to generate the right assembly code for the given multi-core CPU architecture with vector processing capabilities. Founsure possesses important features that shall find various applications in modern data storage, communication, and networked computer systems, in which the data needs protection against device, hardware, and node failures. As data size reached unprecedented levels, these systems have become hungry for network bandwidth, computational resources, and average consumed power. To address that, the proposed library provides a three-dimensional design space that trades off the computational complexity, coding overhead, and data/node repair bandwidth to meet different requirements of modern distributed data storage and processing systems. Founsure library enables efficient encoding, decoding, repairs/rebuilds, and updates while all the required data storage and computations are distributed across the network nodes.Turkiye Bilimsel ve Teknolojik Arastirma Kurumu (TUBITAK) Grant Number : 115C111 - 119E235WOS:000656825700019Scopus - Affiliation ID: 60105072Science Citation Index ExpandedQ3ArticleUluslararası işbirliği ile yapılmayan - HAYIRJanuary2021YÖK - 2020-2

MDS Array Codes with Optimal Rebuilding

MDS array codes are widely used in storage systems to protect data against erasures. We address the rebuilding ratio problem, namely, in the case of erasures, what is the the fraction of the remaining information that needs to be accessed in order to rebuild exactly the lost information? It is clear that when the number of erasures equals the maximum number of erasures that an MDS code can correct then the rebuilding ratio is 1 (access all the remaining information). However, the interesting (and more practical) case is when the number of erasures is smaller than the erasure correcting capability of the code. For example, consider an MDS code that can correct two erasures: What is the smallest amount of information that one needs to access in order to correct a single erasure? Previous work showed that the rebuilding ratio is bounded between 1/2 and 3/4 , however, the exact value was left as an open problem. In this paper, we solve this open problem and prove that for the case of a single erasure with a 2-erasure correcting code, the rebuilding ratio is 1/2 . In general, we construct a new family of r-erasure correcting MDS array codes that has optimal rebuilding ratio of 1/r in the case of a single erasure. Our array codes have efficient encoding and decoding algorithms (for the case r = 2 they use a finite field of size 3) and an optimal update property

Optimal Rebuilding of Multiple Erasures in MDS Codes

MDS array codes are widely used in storage systems due to their computationally efficient encoding and decoding procedures. An MDS code with $r$ redundancy nodes can correct any $r$ node erasures by accessing all the remaining information in the surviving nodes. However, in practice, $e$ erasures is a more likely failure event, for $1\le e<r$. Hence, a natural question is how much information do we need to access in order to rebuild $e$ storage nodes? We define the rebuilding ratio as the fraction of remaining information accessed during the rebuilding of $e$ erasures. In our previous work we constructed MDS codes, called zigzag codes, that achieve the optimal rebuilding ratio of $1/r$ for the rebuilding of any systematic node when $e=1$, however, all the information needs to be accessed for the rebuilding of the parity node erasure. The (normalized) repair bandwidth is defined as the fraction of information transmitted from the remaining nodes during the rebuilding process. For codes that are not necessarily MDS, Dimakis et al. proposed the regenerating codes framework where any $r$ erasures can be corrected by accessing some of the remaining information, and any $e=1$ erasure can be rebuilt from some subsets of surviving nodes with optimal repair bandwidth. In this work, we study 3 questions on rebuilding of codes: (i) We show a fundamental trade-off between the storage size of the node and the repair bandwidth similar to the regenerating codes framework, and show that zigzag codes achieve the optimal rebuilding ratio of $e/r$ for MDS codes, for any $1\le e\le r$. (ii) We construct systematic codes that achieve optimal rebuilding ratio of $1/r$, for any systematic or parity node erasure. (iii) We present error correction algorithms for zigzag codes, and in particular demonstrate how these codes can be corrected beyond their minimum Hamming distances.Comment: There is an overlap of this work with our two previous submissions: Zigzag Codes: MDS Array Codes with Optimal Rebuilding; On Codes for Optimal Rebuilding Access. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1112.037

Zigzag Codes: MDS Array Codes with Optimal Rebuilding

MDS array codes are widely used in storage systems to protect data against erasures. We address the \emph{rebuilding ratio} problem, namely, in the case of erasures, what is the fraction of the remaining information that needs to be accessed in order to rebuild \emph{exactly} the lost information? It is clear that when the number of erasures equals the maximum number of erasures that an MDS code can correct then the rebuilding ratio is 1 (access all the remaining information). However, the interesting and more practical case is when the number of erasures is smaller than the erasure correcting capability of the code. For example, consider an MDS code that can correct two erasures: What is the smallest amount of information that one needs to access in order to correct a single erasure? Previous work showed that the rebuilding ratio is bounded between 1/2 and 3/4, however, the exact value was left as an open problem. In this paper, we solve this open problem and prove that for the case of a single erasure with a 2-erasure correcting code, the rebuilding ratio is 1/2. In general, we construct a new family of $r$-erasure correcting MDS array codes that has optimal rebuilding ratio of $\frac{e}{r}$ in the case of $e$ erasures, $1 \le e \le r$. Our array codes have efficient encoding and decoding algorithms (for the case $r=2$ they use a finite field of size 3) and an optimal update property.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures, submitted to IEEE transactions on information theor

Redundant disk arrays: Reliable, parallel secondary storage

During the past decade, advances in processor and memory technology have given rise to increases in computational performance that far outstrip increases in the performance of secondary storage technology. Coupled with emerging small-disk technology, disk arrays provide the cost, volume, and capacity of current disk subsystems, by leveraging parallelism, many times their performance. Unfortunately, arrays of small disks may have much higher failure rates than the single large disks they replace. Redundant arrays of inexpensive disks (RAID) use simple redundancy schemes to provide high data reliability. The data encoding, performance, and reliability of redundant disk arrays are investigated. Organizing redundant data into a disk array is treated as a coding problem. Among alternatives examined, codes as simple as parity are shown to effectively correct single, self-identifying disk failures

SDN Enabled Network Efficient Data Regeneration for Distributed Storage Systems

Distributed Storage Systems (DSSs) have seen increasing levels of deployment in data centers and in cloud storage networks. DSS provides efficient and cost-effective ways to store large amount of data. To ensure reliability and resilience to failures, DSS employ mirroring and coding schemes at the block and file level. While mirroring techniques provide an efficient way to recover lost data, they do not utilize disk space efficiently, resulting in large overheads in terms of data storage. Coding techniques on the other hand provide a better way to recover data as they reduce the amount of storage space required for data recovery purposes. However, the current recovery process for coded data is not efficient due to the need to transfer large amounts of data to regenerate the data lost as a result of a failure. This results in significant delays and excessive network traffic resulting in a major performance bottleneck. In this thesis, we propose a new architecture for efficient data regeneration in distribution storage systems. A key idea of our architecture is to enable network switches to perform network coding operations, i.e., combine packets they receive over incoming links and forward the resulting packet towards the destination and do this in a principled manner. Another key element of our framework is a transport-layer reverse multicast protocol that takes advantage of network coding to minimize the rebuild time required to transmit the data by allowing more efficient utilization of network bandwidth. The new architecture is supported using the principles of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and making extensions where required in a principled manner. To enable the switches to perform network coding operations, we propose an extension of packet processing pipeline in the dataplane of a software switch. Our testbed experiments show that the proposed architecture results in modest performance gains