Reducing The Sub-packetization Level of Optimal-Access Cooperative MSR Codes

Abstract: Cooperative MSR codes are a kind of storage codes which enable optimal-bandwidth repair of any $h\geq2$ node erasures in a cooperative way, while retaining the minimum storage as an $[n,k]$ MDS code. Each code coordinate (node) is assumed to store an array of $\ell$ symbols, where $\ell$ is termed as sub-packetization. Large sub-packetization tends to induce high complexity, large input/output in practice. To address the disk IO capability, a cooperative MSR code is said to have optimal-access property, if during node repair, the amount of data accessed at each helper node meets a theoretical lower bound. In this paper, we focus on reducing the sub-packetization of optimal-access cooperative MSR codes with two erasures. At first, we design two crucial MDS array codes for repairing a specific repair pattern of two erasures with optimal access. Then, using the two codes as building blocks and by stacking up of the two codes for several times, we obtain an optimal-access cooperative MSR code with two erasures. The derived code has sub-packetization $\ell=r^{\binom{n}{2}-\lfloor\frac{n}{r}\rfloor(\binom{r}{2}-1)}$ where $r=n-k$, and it reduces $\ell$ by a fraction of $1/r^{\lfloor\frac{n}{r}\rfloor(\binom{r}{2}-1)}$ compared with the state of the art ($\ell=r^{\binom{n}{2}}$).