Erasure coding has been recently employed as a powerful method to mitigate delays due to slow or straggling nodes in distributed systems. In this work, we show that erasure coding of data objects can flexibly handle skews in the request rates. Coding can help boost the service rate region, that is, increase the overall volume of data access requests that can be handled by the system. The goal of this paper is to postulate the service rate region as an important consideration in the design of erasure coded distributed systems. We highlight several open problems that can be grouped into two broad threads: 1) characterizing the service rate region of a given code and finding the optimal request allocation, and 2) designing the underlying erasure code for a given service rate region. As contributions along the first thread, we characterize the rate regions of maximum-distance-separable, locally repairable, and Simplex codes. In terms of code design, we show the effectiveness of hybrid codes that combine replication and erasure coding, and also discover fundamental connections between multi-set batch codes and the problem of maximizing the service rate region.

中文翻译：

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服务率区域：编码分布式系统设计的一个新方面

纠删码最近被用作一种有效的方法来减轻由于分布式系统中节点缓慢或分散造成的延迟。在这项工作中，我们表明数据对象的擦除编码可以灵活地处理请求率的偏差。编码可以帮助提升服务速率区域，即增加系统可以处理的数据访问请求的整体量。本文的目标是将服务率区域假定为纠删码分布式系统设计中的一个重要考虑因素。我们强调了几个未解决的问题，它们可以分为两大类：1) 表征给定代码的服务率区域并找到最佳请求分配，以及 2) 设计给定服务率区域的底层擦除代码。作为第一个线程的贡献，我们表征了最大距离可分离、局部可修复和单纯形码的速率区域。在代码设计方面，我们展示了结合复制和擦除编码的混合代码的有效性，并发现了多集批代码与最大化服务率区域问题之间的基本联系。