An @math -vector MDS code is a @math -linear subspace of @math (for some field @math ) of dimension @math , such that any @math (vector) symbols of the codeword suffice to determine the remaining @math (vector) symbols. The length @math of each codeword symbol is called the sub-packetization of the code. Such a code is called minimum storage regenerating (MSR), if any single symbol of a codeword can be recovered by downloading @math field elements (which is known to be the least possible) from each of the other symbols. MSR codes are attractive for use in distributed storage systems, and by now a variety of ingenious constructions of MSR codes are available. However, they all suffer from exponentially large sub-packetization @math . Our main result is an almost tight lower bound showing that for an MSR code, one must have @math . Previously, a lower bound of @math , and a tight lower bound for a restricted class of "optimal access" MSR codes, were known. Our work settles a central open question concerning MSR codes that has received much attention. Further our proof is really short, hinging on one key definition that is somewhat inspired by Galois theory.
A slight relaxation MSR codes called @math -MSR codes where the helper nodes are allowed to transmit a factor @math more than the cutset bound, i.e., @math symbols, were put forth in @cite_19 . They showed that one can construct @math -MSR codes with sub-packetization @math , and roughly logarithmic sub-packetization is also necessary.
@cite_19
2789573885
We present a high-rate @math -MSR code with a sub-packetization level that is polynomial in the dimension @math of the code. While polynomial sub-packetization level was achieved earlier for vector MDS codes that repair systematic nodes optimally, no such MSR code construction is known. In the low-rate regime (i. e., rates less than one-half), MSR code constructions with a linear sub-packetization level are available. But in the high-rate regime (i. e., rates greater than one-half), the known MSR code constructions required a sub-packetization level that is exponential in @math . In the present paper, we construct an MSR code for @math with a fixed rate @math achieveing a sub-packetization level @math . The code allows help-by-transfer repair, i. e., no computations are needed at the helper nodes during repair of a failed node. This paper presents an explicit construction for an @math regenerating code over a field @math operating at the Minimum Storage Regeneration (MSR) point. The MSR code can be constructed to have rate @math as close to @math as desired, sub-packetization given by @math , for @math , field size no larger than @math and where all code symbols can be repaired with the same minimum data download. The construction modifies a prior construction by Sasidharan et. al. which required far larger field-size. A building block appearing in the construction is a scalar MDS code of block length @math . The code has a simple layered structure with coupling across layers, that allows both node repair and data recovery to be carried out by making multiple calls to a decoder for the scalar MDS code. While this work was carried out independently, there is considerable overlap with a prior construction by Ye and Barg. It is shown here that essentially the same architecture can be employed to construct MSR codes using vector binary MDS codes as building blocks in place of scalar MDS codes. The advantage here is that computations can now be carried out over a field of smaller size potentially even over the binary field as we demonstrate in an example. Further, we show how the construction can be extended to handle the case of @math under a mild restriction on the choice of helper nodes. The first focus of the present paper, is on lower bounds on the sub-packetization level @math of an MSR code that is capable of carrying out repair in help-by-transfer fashion (also called optimal-access property). We prove here a lower bound on @math which is shown to be tight for the case @math by comparing with recent code constructions in the literature. We also extend our results to an @math MDS code over the vector alphabet. Our objective even here, is on lower bounds on the sub-packetization level @math of an MDS code that can carry out repair of any node in a subset of @math nodes, @math where each node is repaired (linear repair) by help-by-transfer with minimum repair bandwidth. We prove a lower bound on @math for the case of @math . This bound holds for any @math and is shown to be tight, again by comparing with recent code constructions in the literature. Also provided, are bounds for the case @math Q @math $ . It turns out interestingly, that such a code must necessarily have a coupled-layer structure, similar to that of the Ye-Barg code. The first focus of the present paper, is on lower bounds on the sub-packetization level @math of an MSR code that is capable of carrying out repair in help-by-transfer fashion (also called optimal-access property). We prove here a lower bound on @math which is shown to be tight for the case @math by comparing with recent code constructions in the literature. We also extend our results to an @math MDS code over the vector alphabet. Our objective even here, is on lower bounds on the sub-packetization level @math of an MDS code that can carry out repair of any node in a subset of @math nodes, @math where each node is repaired (linear repair) by help-by-transfer with minimum repair bandwidth. We prove a lower bound on @math for the case of @math . This bound holds for any @math and is shown to be tight, again by comparing with recent code constructions in the literature. Also provided, are bounds for the case @math . We study the form of a vector MDS code having the property that we can repair failed nodes belonging to a fixed set of @math nodes with minimum repair bandwidth and in optimal-access fashion, and which achieve our lower bound on sub-packetization level @math . It turns out interestingly, that such a code must necessarily have a coupled-layer structure, similar to that of the Ye-Barg code. Regenerating codes for distributed storage have attracted much research interest in the past decade. Such codes trade the bandwidth needed to repair a failed node with the overall amount of data stored in the network. Minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes are an important class of optimal regenerating codes that minimize (first) the amount of data stored per node and (then) the repair bandwidth. Specifically, an @math - @math MSR code @math over @math stores a file @math consisting of @math symbols over @math among @math nodes, each storing @math symbols, in such a way that: 1) the file @math can be recovered by downloading the content of any @math of the @math nodes and 2) the content of any failed node can be reconstructed by accessing any @math of the remaining @math nodes and downloading @math symbols from each of these nodes. In practice, the file @math is typically available in uncoded form on some @math of the @math nodes, known as systematic nodes , and the defining node-repair condition above can be relaxed to requiring the optimal repair bandwidth for systematic nodes only . Such codes are called systematic–repair MSR codes . Unfortunately, finite– @math constructions of @math MSR codes are known only for certain special cases: either low rate, namely @math , or high repair connectivity, namely @math . Our main result in this paper is a finite– @math construction of systematic-repair @math MSR codes for all possible values of parameters @math . We also introduce a generalized construction for @math MSR codes to achieve the optimal repair bandwidth for all values of @math simultaneously. We present a high-rate (n, k, d = n − 1)-MSR code with a sub-packetization level that is polynomial in the dimension k of the code. While polynomial sub-packetization level was achieved earlier for vector MDS codes that repair systematic nodes optimally, no such MSR code construction is known. In the low-rate regime (i. e., rates less than one-half), MSR code constructions with a linear sub-packetization level are available. But in the high-rate regime (i. e., rates greater than one-half), the known MSR code constructions required a sub-packetization level that is exponential in k. In the present paper, we construct an MSR code for d = n − 1 with a fixed rate equation, achieveing a sub-packetization level α = O(kt). The code allows help-by-transfer repair, i. e., no computations are needed at the helper nodes during repair of a failed node. An @math maximum distance separable (MDS) array code of length @math , dimension @math , and sub-packetization @math is formed of @math matrices over a finite field @math , with every column of the matrix stored on a separate node in the distributed storage system and viewed as a coordinate of the codeword. Repair of a failed node (recovery of one erased column) can be performed by accessing a set of @math surviving (helper) nodes. The code is said to have the optimal access property if the amount of data accessed at each of the helper nodes meets a lower bound on this quantity. For optimal-access MDS codes with @math , the sub-packetization @math satisfies the bound @math . In our previous work (IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 63, no. 4, 2017), for any @math and @math , we presented an explicit construction of optimal-access MDS codes with sub-packetization @math . In this paper, we take up the question of reducing the sub-packetization value @math to make it to approach the lower bound. We construct an explicit family of optimal-access codes with @math , which differs from the optimal value by at most a factor of @math . These codes can be constructed over any finite field @math as long as @math , and afford low-complexity encoding and decoding procedures. We also define a version of the repair problem that bridges the context of regenerating codes and codes with locality constraints (LRC codes), which we call group repair with optimal access . In this variation, we assume that the set of @math nodes is partitioned into @math repair groups of size @math , and require that the amount of accessed data for repair is the smallest possible whenever the @math helper nodes include all the other @math nodes from the same group as the failed node. For this problem, we construct a family of codes with the group optimal access property. These codes can be constructed over any field @math of size @math , and also afford low-complexity encoding and decoding procedures. This paper presents a construction for high-rate MDS codes that enable bandwidth-efficient repair of a single node. Such MDS codes are also referred to as the minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes in the distributed storage literature. The construction presented in this paper generates MSR codes for all possible number of helper nodes d as d is a design parameter in the construction. Furthermore, the obtained MSR codes have polynomial sub-packetization (a.k.a. node size) α. The construction is built on the recent code proposed by [1], which works only for d = n — 1, i.e., where all the remaining nodes serve as the helper nodes for the bandwidth-efficient repair of a single node. The results of this paper broaden the set of parameters where the constructions of MSR codes were known earlier. Maximum distance separable (MDS) codes are optimal error-correcting codes in the sense that they provide the maximum failure tolerance for a given number of parity nodes. Suppose that an MDS code with @math information nodes and @math parity nodes is used to encode data in a distributed storage system. It is known that if @math out of the @math nodes are inaccessible and @math surviving (helper) nodes are used to recover the lost data, then we need to download at least @math fraction of the data stored in each of the helper nodes ( , 2010 and , 2013). If this lower bound is achieved for the repair of any @math erased nodes from any @math helper nodes, we say that the MDS code has the @math -optimal repair property. We study high-rate MDS array codes with the optimal repair property (also known as minimum storage regenerating codes, or MSR codes). Explicit constructions of such codes in the literature are only available for the cases where there are at most three parity nodes, and these existing constructions can only optimally repair a single node failure by accessing all the surviving nodes. In this paper, given any @math and @math , we present two explicit constructions of MDS array codes with the @math -optimal repair property for all @math and @math simultaneously. Codes in the first family can be constructed over any base field @math as long as @math , where @math . The encoding, decoding, repair of failed nodes, and update procedures of these codes all have low complexity. Codes in the second family have the optimal access property and can be constructed over any base field @math as long as @math . Moreover, both code families have the optimal error resilience capability when repairing failed nodes. We also construct several other related families of MDS codes with the optimal repair property. In this paper, we revisit the problem of characterizing the secrecy capacity of minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes under the passive @math -eavesdropper model, where the eavesdropper has access to data stored on @math nodes and the repair data for an additional @math nodes. We study it from the information-theoretic perspective. First, some general properties of MSR codes as well as a simple and generally applicable upper bound on secrecy capacity are given. Second, a new concept of stable MSR codes is introduced, where the stable property is shown to be closely linked with secrecy capacity. Finally, a comprehensive and explicit result on secrecy capacity in the linear MSR scenario is present, which generalizes all related works in the literature and also predicts certain results for some unexplored linear MSR codes. We propose a generic transformation that can convert any nonbinary @math maximum distance separable (MDS) code into another @math MDS code over the same field such that: 1) some arbitrarily chosen @math nodes have the optimal repair bandwidth and the optimal rebuilding access; 2) for the remaining @math nodes, the normalized repair bandwidth and the normalized rebuilding access (over the file size) are preserved; and 3) the sub-packetization level is increased only by a factor of @math . Two immediate applications of this generic transformation are then presented. The first application is that we can transform any nonbinary MDS code with the optimal repair bandwidth or the optimal rebuilding access for the systematic nodes only, into a new MDS code which possesses the corresponding repair optimality for all nodes. The second application is that by applying the transformation multiple times, any nonbinary @math scalar MDS code can be converted into an @math MDS code with the optimal repair bandwidth and the optimal rebuilding access for all nodes, or only a subset of nodes, whose sub-packetization level is also optimal. We study a generalization of the setting of regenerating codes, motivated by applications to storage systems consisting of clusters of storage nodes. There are @math clusters in total, with @math nodes per cluster. A data file is coded and stored across the @math nodes, with each node storing @math symbols. For availability of data, we require that the file be retrievable by downloading the entire content from any subset of @math clusters. Nodes represent entities that can fail. We distinguish between intra-cluster and inter-cluster bandwidth (BW) costs during node repair. Node-repair in a cluster is accomplished by downloading @math symbols each from any set of @math other clusters, dubbed remote helper clusters, and also up to @math symbols each from any set of @math surviving nodes, dubbed local helper nodes, in the host cluster. We first identify the optimal trade-off between storage-overhead and inter-cluster repair-bandwidth under functional repair, and also present optimal exact-repair code constructions for a class of parameters. The new trade-off is strictly better than what is achievable via space-sharing existing coding solutions, whenever @math . We then obtain sharp lower bounds on the necessary intra-cluster repair BW to achieve optimal trade-off. Under functional repair, random linear network codes (RLNCs) simultaneously optimize usage of both inter- and intra-cluster repair BW; simulation results based on RLNCs suggest optimality of the bounds on intra-cluster repair-bandwidth. Our bounds reveal the interesting fact that, while it is beneficial to increase the number of local helper nodes @math in order to improve the storage-vs-inter-cluster-repair-BW trade-off, increasing @math not only increases intra-cluster BW in the host-cluster, but also increases the intra-cluster BW in the remote helper clusters. We also analyze resilience of the clustered storage system against passive eavesdropping by providing file-size bounds and optimal code constructions. In this paper, we revisit the problem of finding the longest systematic-length @math for a linear minimum storage regenerating (MSR) code with optimal repair of only systematic part, for a given per-node storage capacity @math and an arbitrary number of parity nodes @math . We study the problem by following the geometric analysis of linear subspaces and operators. First, a simple quadratic bound is given, which implies that @math is the largest number of systematic nodes in the scenario. Second, an @math -based-log bound is derived, which is superior to the upper bound on log-base @math in the prior work. Finally, an explicit upper bound depending on the value of @math is introduced, which further extends the corresponding result in the literature. Maximum distance separable (MDS) codes are optimal error-correcting codes in the sense that they provide the maximum failure-tolerance for a given number of parity nodes. Suppose that an MDS code with @math information nodes and @math parity nodes is used to encode data in a distributed storage system. It is known that if @math out of the @math nodes are inaccessible and @math surviving (helper) nodes are used to recover the lost data, then we need to download at least @math fraction of the data stored in each of the helper nodes (Dimakis et. al., 2010 and , 2013). If this lower bound is achieved for the repair of any @math erased nodes from any @math helper nodes, we say that the MDS code has the @math -optimal repair property. We study high-rate MDS array codes with the optimal repair property. Explicit constructions of such codes in the literature are only available for the cases where there are at most 3 parity nodes, and these existing constructions can only optimally repair a single node failure by accessing all the surviving nodes. In this paper, given any @math and @math , we present two explicit constructions of MDS array codes with the @math -optimal repair property for all @math and @math simultaneously. Codes in the first family can be constructed over any base field @math as long as @math where @math The encoding, decoding, repair of failed nodes, and update procedures of these codes all have low complexity. Codes in the second family have the optimal access property and can be constructed over any base field @math as long as @math Moreover, both code families have the optimal error resilience capability when repairing failed nodes. We also construct several other related families of MDS codes with the optimal repair property. A locally correctable code (LCC) is an error correcting code that allows correction of any arbitrary coordinate of a corrupted codeword by querying only a few coordinates. We show that any zero-error @math -query locally correctable code @math that can correct a constant fraction of corrupted symbols must have @math . We say that an LCC is zero-error if there exists a non-adaptive corrector algorithm that succeeds with probability @math when the input is an uncorrupted codeword. All known constructions of LCCs are zero-error. Our result is tight upto constant factors in the exponent. The only previous lower bound on the length of 2-query LCCs over large alphabet was @math due to Katz and Trevisan (STOC 2000). Our bound implies that zero-error LCCs cannot yield @math -server private information retrieval (PIR) schemes with sub-polynomial communication. Since there exists a @math -server PIR scheme with sub-polynomial communication (STOC 2015) based on a zero-error @math -query locally decodable code (LDC), we also obtain a separation between LDCs and LCCs over large alphabet. For our proof of the result, we need a new decomposition lemma for directed graphs that may be of independent interest. Given a dense directed graph @math , our decomposition uses the directed version of Szemeredi regularity lemma due to Alon and Shapira (STOC 2003) to partition almost all of @math into a constant number of subgraphs which are either edge-expanding or empty. We study a noiseless broadcast link serving @math users whose requests arise from a library of @math files. Every user is equipped with a cache of size @math files each. It has been shown that by splitting all the files into packets and placing individual packets in a random independent manner across all the caches prior to any transmission, at most @math file transmissions are required for any set of demands from the library. The achievable delivery scheme involves linearly combining packets of different files following a greedy clique cover solution to the underlying index coding problem. This remarkable multiplicative gain of random placement and coded delivery has been established in the asymptotic regime when the number of packets per file @math scales to infinity. The asymptotic coding gain obtained is roughly @math . In this paper, we initiate the finite-length analysis of random caching schemes when the number of packets @math is a function of the system parameters @math , and @math . Specifically, we show that the existing random placement and clique cover delivery schemes that achieve optimality in the asymptotic regime can have at most a multiplicative gain of 2 even if the number of packets is exponential in the asymptotic gain @math . Furthermore, for any clique cover-based coded delivery and a large class of random placement schemes that include the existing ones, we show that the number of packets required to get a multiplicative gain of @math is at least @math . We design a new random placement and an efficient clique cover-based delivery scheme that achieves this lower bound approximately. We also provide tight concentration results that show that the average (over the random placement involved) number of transmissions concentrates very well requiring only a polynomial number of packets in the rest of the system parameters. This paper studies the problem of code symbol availability: a code symbol is said to have @math -availability if it can be reconstructed from @math disjoint groups of other symbols, each of size at most @math . For example, @math -replication supports @math -availability as each symbol can be read from its @math other (disjoint) replicas, i.e., @math . However, the rate of replication must vanish like @math as the availability increases. This paper shows that it is possible to construct codes that can support a scaling number of parallel reads while keeping the rate to be an arbitrarily high constant. It further shows that this is possible with the minimum distance arbitrarily close to the Singleton bound. This paper also presents a bound demonstrating a trade-off between minimum distance, availability and locality. Our codes match the aforementioned bound and their construction relies on combinatorial objects called resolvable designs. From a practical standpoint, our codes seem useful for distributed storage applications involving hot data, i.e., the information which is frequently accessed by multiple processes in parallel. Binary maximum distance separable (MDS) array codes contain @math information columns and @math parity columns in which each entry is a bit that can tolerate @math arbitrary erasures. When a column in an MDS code fails, it has been proven that we must download at least half of the content from each helper column if @math columns are selected as the helper columns. If the lower bound is achieved such that the @math helper columns can be selected from any @math surviving columns, then the repair is an optimal repair. Otherwise, if the lower bound is achieved with @math specific helper columns, the repair is a weak-optimal repair. This paper proposes a class of binary MDS array codes with @math and @math that asymptotically achieve weak-optimal repair of an information column with @math helper columns. We show that there exist many encoding matrices such that the corresponding binary MDS array codes can asymptotically achieve weak-optimal repair for repairing any information column. Regenerating codes are a class of recently developed codes for distributed storage that, like Reed-Solomon codes, permit data recovery from any arbitrary k of n nodes. However regenerating codes possess in addition, the ability to repair a failed node by connecting to any arbitrary d nodes and downloading an amount of data that is typically far less than the size of the data file. This amount of download is termed the repair bandwidth. Minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes are a subclass of regenerating codes that require the least amount of network storage; every such code is a maximum distance separable (MDS) code. Further, when a replacement node stores data identical to that in the failed node, the repair is termed as exact. The four principal results of the paper are (a) the explicit construction of a class of MDS codes for d = n - 1 ≥ 2k - 1 termed the MISER code, that achieves the cut-set bound on the repair bandwidth for the exact repair of systematic nodes, (b) proof of the necessity of interference alignment in exact-repair MSR codes, (c) a proof showing the impossibility of constructing linear, exact-repair MSR codes for d <; 2k - 3 in the absence of symbol extension, and (d) the construction, also explicit, of high-rate MSR codes for d = k + 1. Interference alignment (IA) is a theme that runs throughout the paper: the MISER code is built on the principles of IA and IA is also a crucial component to the nonexistence proof for d <; 2k - 3. To the best of our knowledge, the constructions presented in this paper are the first explicit constructions of regenerating codes that achieve the cut-set bound. Two widely studied models of multiple-node repair in distributed storage systems are centralized repair and cooperative repair. The centralized model assumes that all the failed nodes are recreated in one location, while the cooperative one stipulates that the failed nodes may communicate but are distinct, and the amount of data exchanged between them is included in the repair bandwidth. We show that cooperative model is stronger than the centralized one, in the sense that MDS codes with optimal repair bandwidth under the former model have the same property under the latter one. In this paper we present explicit constructions of MDS codes with optimal cooperative repair for all possible parameters. More precisely, given any @math such that @math we construct explicit @math MDS codes over the field @math of size @math that can optimally repair any @math erasures from any @math helper nodes. The repair scheme of our codes involves two rounds of communication. In the first round, each failed node downloads information from the helper nodes, and in the second one, each failed node downloads additional information from the other failed nodes. This shows that two rounds of communication in cooperative repair always suffice, and that the proposed codes achieve the optimal repair bandwidth using the smallest possible number of rounds.