Repair for Distributed Storage Systems with Erasure Channels

Abstract: We study the repair problem of distributed storage systems in erasure networks where the packets transmitted from surviving nodes to the new node might be lost. The fundamental storage-bandwidth tradeoff is calculated by multicasting analysis in erasure networks. The optimal tradeoff bound can be asymptotically achieved when the number of transmission (packets) goes to infinity. For a limited number of transmission, we study the probability of successful regenerating. Then, we investigate two approaches of increasing the probability of successful regenerating, namely, by connecting more surviving nodes or by increasing the storage space of nodes. Using more nodes may pose larger delay and in certain situation it might not be possible to connect to more nodes too. We show that in addition to reducing repair bandwidth, increasing storage space can also increase reliability for repair.