On Heterogeneous Regenerating Codes and Capacity of Distributed Storage Systems

Abstract: Heterogeneous Distributed Storage Systems (DSS) are close to real world applications for data storage. Internet caching system and peer-to-peer storage clouds are the examples of such DSS. In this work, we calculate the capacity formula for such systems where each node store different number of packets and each having a different repair bandwidth (node can be repaired by contacting a specific set of nodes). The tradeoff curve between storage and repair bandwidth is studied for such heterogeneous DSS. By analyzing the capacity formula new minimum bandwidth regenerating (MBR) and minimum storage regenerating (MBR) points are obtained on the curve. It is shown that in some cases these are better than the homogeneous DSS.