Title
The MDS Queue: Analysing the Latency Performance of Erasure Codes.
Abstract
In order to scale economically, data centers are increasingly evolving their data storage methods from simple data replication to more powerful erasure codes, which provide the same level of reliability as replication, but at a significantly lower storage cost. In particular, it is well known that maximum-distance-separable (MDS) codes, such as Reed–Solomon codes, can achieve a target reliability with the maximum storage efficiency. While the use of codes for providing improved reliability in archival storage systems, where data is less frequently accessed (or so-called “cold data”), is well understood, the role of codes in storing more frequently accessed and active “hot data”, where latency is the key metric, is less clear. In this paper, we study data storage systems based on MDS codes through the lens of queueing theory, and term the queueing system arising under codes as an “MDS queue.” We provide lower and upper bounds on the average job latency for both centralized and decentralized versions of MDS queues. We also provide extensive simulations to corroborate our analysis as well as obtain additional insights.
Year
DOI
Venue
2017
10.1109/TIT.2017.2674671
IEEE Trans. Information Theory
Keywords
Field
DocType
Servers,Queueing analysis,Reliability,Data models,Data storage systems,Analytical models,Upper bound
Data modeling,Discrete mathematics,Replication (computing),Latency (engineering),Computer data storage,Computer science,Queue,Computer network,Queueing theory,Storage efficiency,Erasure code
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
63
5
0018-9448
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
0.46
0
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Kangwook Lee111715.76
Nihar B. Shah2120277.17
Longbo Huang364051.75
Kannan Ramchandran494011029.57