Comparing cost and performance of replication and erasure coding

TL;DR

This paper compares the cost and performance trade-offs between replication and erasure coding in data storage systems, highlighting how erasure coding can achieve similar reliability with less redundancy.

Contribution

It provides an analysis of the trade-offs between replication and erasure coding, offering insights into their relative costs and performance impacts.

Findings

Erasure coding can reduce redundancy compared to replication.

Performance differences depend on workload and system configuration.

Cost savings are significant with erasure coding in large-scale systems.

Abstract

Data storage systems are more reliable than their individual components. In order to build highly reliable systems out of less reliable parts, systems introduce redundancy. In replicated systems, objects are simply copied several times with each copy residing on a different physical device. While such an approach is simple and direct, more elaborate approaches such as erasure coding can achieve equivalent levels of data protection while using less redundancy. This report examines the trade-offs in cost and performance between replicated and erasure encoded storage systems.