NCCloud: applying network coding for the storage repair in a cloud-of-clouds

Abstract

To provide fault tolerance for cloud storage, recent studies propose to stripe data across multiple cloud vendors. However, if a cloud suffers from a permanent failure and loses all its data, then we need to repair the lost data from other surviving clouds to preserve data redundancy. We present a proxy-based system for multiple-cloud storage called NCCloud, which aims to achieve cost-effective repair for a permanent single-cloud failure. NCCloud is built on top of network-coding-based storage schemes called regenerating codes. Specifically, we propose an implementable design for the functional minimum-storage regenerating code (F-MSR), which maintains the same data redundancy level and same storage requirement as in traditional erasure codes (e.g., RAID-6), but uses less repair traffic. We implement a proof-of-concept prototype of NCCloud and deploy it atop local and commercial clouds. We validate the cost effectiveness of FMSR in storage repair over RAID-6, and show that both schemes have comparable response time performance in normal cloud storage operations.