In this paper, we develop a scheme to recover a single erasure when using a Cartesian code,in the context of a distributed storage system. Particularly, we develop a scheme withconsiderations to minimize the associated bandwidth and maximize the associateddimension. The problem of recovering a missing node's data exactly in a distributedstorage system is known as theexact repair problem. Previous research has studied theexact repair problem for Reed-Solomon codes. We focus on Cartesian codes, and show wecan enact the recovery using a linear exact repair scheme framework, similar to the oneoutlined by Guruswami and Wooters in 2017. / Master of Science / Distributed storage systems are systems which store a single data file over multiple storage nodes. Each storage node has a certain storage efficiency, the "space" required to store the information on that node. The value of these systems, is their ability to safely store data for extended periods of time. We want to design distributed storage systems such that if one storage node fails, we can recover it from the data in the remaining nodes. Recovering a node from the data stored in the other nodes requires the nodes to communicate data with each other. Ideally, these systems are designed to minimize the bandwidth, the inter-nodal communication required to recover a lost node, as well as maximize the storage efficiency of each node. A great mathematical framework to build these distributed storage systems on is erasure codes. In this paper, we will specifically develop distributed storage systems that use Cartesian codes. We will show that in the right setting, these systems can have a very similar bandwidth to systems build from Reed-Solomon codes, without much loss in storage efficiency.

Error-control codes, which are being extensively used in communication systems, have found themselves very useful in data storage as well during the past decade. This thesis deals with two types of codes for data storage, one pertaining to the issue of privacy and the other to reliability. In many scenarios, user accessing some critical data from a server would not want the server to learn the identity of data retrieved. This problem, called Private Information Retrieval (PIR) was rst formally introduced by Chor et al and they gave protocols for PIR in the case where multiple copies of the same data is stored in non-communicating servers. The PIR protocols that came up later also followed this replication model. The problem with data replication is the high storage overhead involved, which will lead to large storage costs. Later, Fazeli, Vardy and Yaakobi, came up with the notion of PIR code that enables information-theoretic PIR with low storage overhead. In the rst part of this thesis, construction of PIR codes for certain parameter values is presented. These constructions are based on a variant of conventional Reed-Muller (RM) codes called binary Projective Reed-Muller (PRM) codes. A lower bound on block length of systematic PIR codes is derived and the PRM based PIR codes are shown to be optimal with respect to this bound in some special cases. The codes constructed here have smaller block lengths than the short block length PIR codes known in the literature. The generalized Hamming weights of binary PRM codes are also studied. Another work described here is the implementation and evaluation of an erasure code called Coupled Layer (CL) code in Ceph distributed storage system. Erasure codes are used in distributed storage to ensure reliability. An additional desirable feature required for codes used in this setting is the ability to handle node repair efficiently. The Minimum Storage Regenerating (MSR) version of CL code downloads optimal amount of data from other nodes during repair of a failed node and even disk reads during this process is optimum, for that storage overhead. The CL-Near-MSR code, which is a variant of CL-MSR, can efficiently handle a restricted set of multiple node failures also. Four example CL codes were evaluated using a 26 node Amazon cluster and performance metrics like network bandwidth, disk read and repair time were measured. Repair time reduction of the order of 3 was observed for one of those codes, in comparison with Reed Solomon code having same parameters. To the best of our knowledge, such large gains in repair performance have never been demonstrated before.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) that use tiny wireless devices capable of communicating, processing, and sensing promise to have applications in virtually all fields. Smart homes and smart cities are just few of the examples that WSNs can enable. Despite their potential, WSNs suffer from reliability and energy limitations. In this study, we address the problem of designing Distributed Data Storage Systems (DDSSs) for WSNs using decentralized erasure codes. A unique aspect of WSNs is that their data is inherently decentralized. This calls for a decentralized mechanism for encoding and decoding. We propose a distributed data storage framework to increase data survivability in WSNs. The framework utilizes Decentralized Erasure Codes for Data Survivability (DEC-DS) which allow for determining the amount of redundancy required in both hardware and data to allow sensed data to survive failures in the network. To address the energy limitations, we show two approaches to implement the proposed solution in an energy efficient manner. The two approaches employ Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) to exploit coding opportunities in order to save energy and in turn prolong network life. A routing based scheme, called DEC Encode-and-Forward (DEC-EaF), applies to networks with routing capability, while the second, DEC Encode-and-Disseminate (DEC-EaD), uses a variation of random walk to build the target code in a decentralized fashion. We also introduce a new decentralized approach to implement Luby Transform (LT)-Codes based DDSSs. The scheme is called Decentralized Robust Soliton Storage (DRSS) and it operates in a decentralized fashion and requires no coordination between sensor nodes. The schemes are tested through extensive simulations to evaluate their performance. We also compare the proposed schemes to similar schemes in the literature. The comparison considers energy efficiency as well as coding related aspects. Using the proposed schemes can greatly improve the reliability of WSNs especially under harsh working conditions. / Thesis (Ph.D, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2013-09-30 22:43:04.509

In this thesis we develop exact repair schemes capable of repairing or circumventing unavailable servers of a distributed network in the context of distributed storage and secure distributed matrix multiplication. We develop the (Λ, Γ, W, ⊙)-exact repair scheme framework for discussing both of these contexts and develop a multitude of explicit exact repair schemes utilizing decreasing monomial-Cartesian codes (DMC codes). Specifically, we construct novel DMC codes in the form of augmented Cartesian codes and rectangular monomial-Cartesian codes, as well as design exact repair schemes utilizing these constructions inspired by the schemes from Guruswami and Wootters [16] and Chen and Zhang [6]. In the context of distributed storage we demonstrate the existence of both high rate and low bandwidth systems based on these schemes, and we develop two methods to extend them to the l-erasure case. Additionally, we develop a family of hybrid schemes capable of attaining high rates, low bandwidths, and a balance in between which proves to be competitive compared to existing schemes. In the context of secure distributed matrix multiplication we develop similarly impactful schemes which have very competitive communication costs. We also construct an encoding algorithm based on multivariate interpolation and prove it is T-secure. / Doctor of Philosophy / Distributed networks may be thought of as networks of computers and/or servers which are capable of transmitting and receiving data from one another. For many applications it is possible for distributed networks to perform better than the sum of their constituent parts. In this thesis we will focus on the particular applications of distributed storage and secure distributed multiplication. A distributed storage system is a system that is capable of storing a single data file over every server in a distributed network. Distributed storage systems often come with exact repair schemes which are algorithms designed to reconstruct the data from a server in the network given the data from the other servers. In particular, if a server on the network ever fails or is otherwise unavailable an exact repair scheme can be used to repair the lost data from the server and maintain the original file. A distributed matrix multiplication scheme on the other hand is a process by which two matrices stored on a source server can be multiplied using a distributed network of helper servers. Again if a helper server becomes unavailable during this process we may use an exact repair scheme to circumvent this delay. The main goal of this thesis is to develop exact repair schemes for the distributed storage and secure distributed matrix multiplication contexts utilizing a mathematical object known as an evaluation code. We will develop several families of exact repair schemes which may be finely tuned to fit particular situations within these contexts, and we will compare these schemes to the existing schemes in the field.

Secure communication under channel uncertainty is an important and challenging problem in physical-layer security and cryptography. In this dissertation, we take a fundamental information-theoretic view at three concrete settings and use them to shed insight into efficient secure communication techniques for different scenarios under channel uncertainty. First, a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) Gaussian broadcast channel with two receivers and two messages: a common message intended for both receivers (i.e., channel uncertainty for decoding the common message at the receivers) and a confidential message intended for one of the receivers but needing to be kept asymptotically perfectly secret from the other is considered. A matrix characterization of the secrecy capacity region is established via a channel-enhancement argument and an extremal entropy inequality previously established for characterizing the capacity region of a degraded compound MIMO Gaussian broadcast channel. Second, a multilevel security wiretap channel where there is one possible realization for the legitimate receiver channel but multiple possible realizations for the eavesdropper channel (i.e., channel uncertainty at the eavesdropper) is considered. A coding scheme is designed such that the number of secure bits delivered to the legitimate receiver depends on the actual realization of the eavesdropper channel. More specifically, when the eavesdropper channel realization is weak, all bits delivered to the legitimate receiver need to be secure. In addition, when the eavesdropper channel realization is strong, a prescribed part of the bits needs to remain secure. We call such codes security embedding codes, referring to the fact that high-security bits are now embedded into the low-security ones. We show that the key to achieving efficient security embedding is to jointly encode the low-security and high-security bits. In particular, the low-security bits can be used as (part of) the transmitter randomness to protect the high-security ones. Finally, motivated by the recent interest in building secure, robust and efficient distributed information storage systems, the problem of secure symmetrical multilevel diversity coding (S-SMDC) is considered. This is a setting where there are channel uncertainties at both the legitimate receiver and the eavesdropper. The problem of encoding individual sources is first studied. A precise characterization of the entire admissible rate region is established via a connection to the problem of secure coding over a three-layer wiretap network and utilizing some basic polyhedral structure of the admissible rate region. Building on this result, it is then shown that the simple coding strategy of separately encoding individual sources at the encoders can achieve the minimum sum rate for the general S-SMDC problem.

Les applications modernes ont des tendances de diverger à la fois le profile I/O et les requiers du stockage. La liaison d'une application scientifique ou commerciale avec un system "general-purpose" produit probablement un résultât sous-optimale. Même sous la présence des systèmes "purpose specific" des application aux classes multiples de workloads ont encore besoin de distribuer du travail de calcul au correct system. Cependant, cette stratégie n'est pas triviale comme des plateformes différentes butent diversifier leur propos et par conséquence elles requièrent que l'application intégrée des chemins multiples de code. Le but de l'implémentation de ces chemins n'est pas trivial, il requiert beaucoup d'effort et des capacités de codage. Le problème devient vaste quand les applications ont besoin de bénéficier de plusieurs data-stores en parallèle. Dans cette dissertation, on va introduire les "storage containers" comme le prochain étape logique, mais révolutionnaire. Un "storage container" est une infrastructure virtuelle qui découple une application de ses data-stores correspondants avec la même manière que Docker découple l'application runtime des servers physiques. En particulier, un "storage container" est un middleware qui sépare des changements fait pour bouts de code des application par des utilisateurs scientifiques, de celui fait pour des actions de I/O par des développeurs ou des administrateurs.Pour faciliter le développement et déploiement d'un "storage container" on va introduire un cadre appelé Tromos. Parmi son filtre, tout qui est nécessaire pour qu'un architecte d'une application construite une solution de stockage est de modéliser l'environnement voulu dans un fichier de définition and laisser le reste au logiciel. Tromos est livré avec un dépôt de plugins parmi les quelles l'architecte peut choisir d'optimiser le conteneur pour l'application activée. Parmi des options disponibles, sont inclus des transformations des données, des politiques de placement des données, des méthodes de reconstruction des données, du management d'espace de noms, et de la gestion de la cohérence à la demande. Comme preuve de concept, on utilisera Tromos pour créer des environnements de stockage personnalisés facilement comparés à Gluster, un système de stockage bien établi et polyvalent. Les résultats vous montrent que les "storage containers" adaptés aux applications, même s'ils sont auto-produits, peuvent surpasser les systèmes "general purpose" les plus sophistiqués en supprimant simplement la surcharge inutile de fonctionnalités factices. / Modern applications tend to diverge both in the I/O profile and storage requirements. Matching a scientific or commercial application with a general-purpose system will most likely yield suboptimal performance. Even in the presence of purpose-specific' systems, applications with multiple classes of workloads are still in need to disseminate the workload to the right system. This strategy, however, is not trivial as different platforms aim at diversified goals and therefore require the application to incorporate multiple codepaths. Implementing such codepaths is non-trivial, requires a lot of effort and programming skills, and is error-prone. The hurdles are getting worse when applications need to leverage multiple data-stores in parallel. In this dissertation, we introduce "storage containers" as the next logical in the storage evolution. A "storage container" is virtual infrastructure that decouples the application from the underlying data-stores in the same way Docker decouples the application runtime from the physical servers. In other words, it is middleware that separate changes made to application codes by science users from changes made to I/O actions by developers or administrators.To facilitate the development and deployment of a "storage container" we introduce a framework called Tromos. Through its lens, all that it takes for an application architect to spin-up a custom storage solution is to model the target environment into a definition file and let the framework handles the rest. Tromos comes with a repository of plugins which the architect can choose as to optimize the container for the application at hand. Available options include data transformations, data placement policies, data reconstruction methods, namespace management, and on-demand consistency handling.As a proof-of-concept we use Tromos to prototype customized storage environments which we compare against Gluster; a well-estalished and versatile storage system. The results have shown that application-tailored "storage containers", even if they are auto-produced, can outperform more mature "general-purpose" systems by merely removing the unnecessary overhead of unused features.

Cette thèse a pour but d’étudier les activités humaines à travers l’analyse du flux de signalisation du réseau cellulaire de données (GTP). Pour ce faire, nous avons mis en place un ensemble d’outils nous permettant de collecter, stocker et analyser ces données de signalisation. Ceci en se basant sur une architecture indépendante au maximum des constructeurs de matériel. À partir des données extraites par cette plateforme nous avons fait trois contributions.Dans une première contribution, nous présentons l’architecture de la plateforme de capture et d’analyse de la signalisation GTP dans un réseau d’opérateur. Ce travail a pour but de faire l’inventaire des différents éléments déclenchant des mises à jour et aussi d’estimer la précision temporelle et spatiale des données collectées. Ensuite, nous présentons une série de mesures, mettant en avant les caractéristiques principales de la mobilité humaine observées au travers de la signalisation mobile (le temps inter-arrivées des messages de mise à jour, la distance observée des sauts entre cellules lors des déplacements des clients). Finalement, nous présentons l’analyse des compromis qui ont été faits entre la rapidité d’écriture/de lecture et la facilité d’usage du format de fichier utilisé lors de l’échange d’informations entre les sondes de capture et le système stockage. Deuxièmement, nous avons été capables de mettre en place un algorithme de reconstitution de trajets. Cet algorithme permet, à partir de données éparses issues du réseau cellulaire, de forger des trajets sur les voies de transport. Il se base sur les données des trajets sous-échantillonnées et en déduit les positions du client sur les voies de communication. Nous avons mis en place un graphe de transport intermodal. Celui-ci porte sur le métro, le train et le réseau routier. Il connecte les différents points entre eux dans chacune des couches de transport et interconnecte les modes de transport entre eux, aux intersections. Notre algorithme se base sur un modèle de chaîne de Markov cachée pour placer sur le graphe les positions probables des individus entre les différentes observations. L’apport de ce travail est l’utilisation des propriétés topologiques du réseau de transport afin de renseigner les probabilités d’émission et de transition dans un modèle non supervisé. Ces travaux ont donné lieu à une publication et à un brevet. Finalement, notre dernière contribution utilise les données issues de la signalisation à des fins de dimensionnement du réseau mobile d’opérateur. Il s’agit de dimensionner dynamiquement un réseau mobile en utilisant les bandes de fréquences dites vTV-Whitespace. Ces bandes de fréquences sont libérées sous certaines conditions aux USA et soumises à vente aux enchères. Ce que nous proposons est un système basé sur un algorithme de qualité d’expérience (QoE) et sur le coût de la ressource radio afin de choisir où déployer des femtocells supplémentaires et où en supprimer en fonction des variations de population par unité d’espace. En conclusion, cette thèse offre un aperçu du potentiel de l’analyse des metadata de signalisation d’un réseau dans un contexte plus général que la simple supervision d’un réseau d’opérateur / The aim of this thesis is to study human activities through the analysis of the signaling flow in cellular data network (GTP). In order to achieve this goal, we implemented a set of tools allowing us to collect, store and analyze this signaling data. We created an architecture independent at most of hardware manufacturers and network operators. Using data extracted by this platform we made three main contributions. In our first contribution, we present the GTP capture and analysis platform in a mobile operator network. This work intends to list the different elements triggering updates and to estimate the temporal and spatial accuracy of the data collected. Next, we present a set of measures that represent the main characteristics of human mobility observed through the mobile signaling data (the inter-arrival time of update messages, the observed distances of hops from cell to cell made by moving users). Finally, we present the analysis of the compromise that was made between the writing/reading performances and the ease of use of the file format for the data storage. In our second contribution, we propose CT-Mapper, an unsupervised algorithm that enables the mapping of mobile phone traces over a multimodal transport network. One of the main strengths of CT-Mapper is its capability to map noisy sparse cellular multimodal trajectories over a multilayer transportation network where the layers have different physical properties and not only to map trajectories associated with a single layer. Such a network is modeled by a large multilayer graph in which the nodes correspond to metro/train stations or road intersections and edges correspond to connections between them. The mapping problem is modeled by an unsupervised HMM where the observations correspond to sparse user mobile trajectories and the hidden states to the multilayer graph nodes. The HMM is unsupervised as the transition and emission probabilities are inferred using respectively the physical transportation properties and the information on the spatial coverage of antenna base stations. Finally, in our last contribution we propose a method for cellular resource planning taking into account user mobility. Since users move, the bandwidth resource should move accordingly. We design a score based method using TV Whitespace, and user experience, to determine from which cell resource should be removed and to which one it should be added. Combined with traffic history it calculates scores for each cell. Bandwidth is reallocated on a half-day basis. Before that, real traces of cellular networks in urban districts are presented which confirm that static network planning is no longer optimal. A dynamic femtocell architecture is then presented. It is based on mesh interconnected elements and designed to serve the score based bandwidth allocation algorithm. The score method along with the architecture are simulated and results are presented. They confirm the expected improvement in bandwidth and delay per user while maintaining a low operation cost at the operator side. In conclusion, this thesis provides an overview of the potential of analyzing the signaling metadata of a network in a broader context that supervision of an operator network

Kubernetes is a container orchestration system that has been rising in popularity in recent years. The modular nature of Kubernetes allows the usage of different storage solutions, and for cloud environments, cloud-native distributed storage solutions maybe attractive due to their redundant nature. There are many tools for cloud-native distributed storage available on the market today with differing features and performance. Choosing the correct one for an organisation can be difficult. Organisations utilising Kubernetes in cloud environments would like to be as performance efficient as possible to save on costs and resources. This study aims to offer a benchmark and analysis for some of the most popular tools, to help organisations choose the ‘best’ solution for their operational needs, from a performance perspective. The benchmarks compare three cloud-native distributed storage solutions, OpenEBS, Portworx, and Rook-Ceph on both Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). For a baseline comparison, the study will also benchmark the cloud providers own solutions; Azure Disk Storage, and Amazon Elastic Block Storage. The study compares these solutions from three key metrics; bandwidth, latency, and IOPS, in both read and write performance. / <p>Det finns övrigt digitalt material (t.ex. film-, bild- eller ljudfiler) eller modeller/artefakter tillhörande examensarbetet som ska skickas till arkivet.</p><p>There are other digital material (eg film, image or audio files) or models/artifacts that belongs to the thesis and need to be archived.</p>

In this thesis, three problems have been considered and new coding schemes have been devised for each of them. The first is related to distributed function computation, the second to coding for distributed storage and the final problem is based on locally correctable codes. A common theme of the first two problems considered is distributed computation. The first problem is motivated by the problem of distributed function computation considered by Korner and Marton, where the goal is to compute XOR of two binary sources at the receiver. It has been shown that linear encoders give better sum rates for some source distributions as compared to the usual Slepian-Wolf scheme. We generalize this distributed function computation setting to the case of more than two sources and the receiver is interested in computing multiple linear combinations of the sources. Consider `m' random variables each of which takes values from a finite field and are associated with a certain joint probability distribution. The receiver is interested in the lossless computation of `s' linear combinations of the m random variables. By considering the set of all linear combinations of m random variables as a vector space V , this problem can be interpreted as a subspace-computation problem. For this problem, we develop three increasingly refined approaches, all based on linear encoders. The first two approaches which are termed as common code approach and selected subspace approach, use a common matrix to encode all the sources. In the common code approach, the desired subspace W is computed at the receiver, whereas in the selected subspace approach, possibly a larger subspace U which contains the desired subspace is computed. The larger subspace U which gives the minimum sum rate itself is based on a decomposition of vector space V into a chain of subspaces. The chain of subspaces is determined by the joint probability distribution of m random variables and a notion of normalized measure of entropy. The third approach is a nested code approach, where all the encoding matrices are nested and the same subspace U which is identified in the selected subspace approach is computed. We characterize the sum rates under all the three approaches. The sum rate under nested code approach is no larger than both selected subspace approach and Slepian-Wolf approach. For a large class of joint distributions and subspaces W , the nested code scheme is shown to improve upon Slepian-Wolf scheme. Additionally, a class of source distributions and subspaces are identified, for which the nested code approach is sum-rate optimal. In the second problem, we consider a distributed storage network, where data is stored across nodes in a network which are failure-prone. The goal is to store data reliably and efficiently. For a required level of reliability, it is of interest to minimise storage overhead and also of interest to perform node repair efficiently. Conventionally replication and maximum distance separable (MDS) codes are employed in such systems. Though replication is very efficient in terms of node repair, the storage overhead is high. MDS codes have low storage overhead but even the repair of a single failed node requires contacting a large number of nodes and downloading all their data. We consider two coding solutions that have recently been proposed, which enable efficient node repair in case of single node failure. The first solution called regenerating codes seeks to minimize the amount of data downloaded for node repair, while codes with locality attempt to minimize the number of helper nodes accessed. We extend these results in two directions. In the first one, we introduce the notion of codes with locality where the local codes have minimum distance more than 2 and hence can recover a code symbol locally even in the presence of multiple erasures. These codes are termed as codes with local erasure correction. We say that a code has information locality if there exists a set of message symbols, each of which is covered by local codes. A code is said to have all-symbol locality if all the code symbols are covered by local codes. An upper bound on the minimum distance of codes with information locality is presented and codes that are optimal with respect to this bound are constructed. We make a connection between codes with local erasure correction and concatenated codes. The second direction seeks to build codes that combine the advantages of both codes with locality as well as regenerating codes. These codes, termed here as codes with local regeneration, are codes with locality over a vector alphabet, in which the local codes themselves are regenerating codes. There are two well known classes of regenerating codes known as minimum storage regenerating (MSR) codes and minimum bandwidth regenerating (MBR) codes. We derive two upper bounds on the minimum distance of vector-alphabet codes with locality, one for the case when the local codes are MSR codes and the second for the case when the local codes are MBR codes. We also provide several optimal constructions of both classes of codes which achieve their respective minimum distance bounds with equality. The third problem deals with locally correctable codes. A block code of length `n' is said to be locally correctable, if there exists a randomized algorithm such that any one of the coordinates of the codeword can be recovered by querying at most `r' coordinates, even in presence of some fraction of errors. We study the local correctability of linear codes whose duals contain 4-designs. We also derive a bound relating `r' and fraction of errors that can be tolerated, when each instance of the randomized algorithm is `t'-error correcting instead of simple parity computation.

This thesis investigates the application of autonomic management to a distributed storage system. Effects on performance and resource consumption were measured in experiments, which were carried out in a local area test-bed. The experiments were conducted with components of one specific distributed storage system, but seek to be applicable to a wide range of such systems, in particular those exposed to varying conditions. The perceived characteristics of distributed storage systems depend on their configuration parameters and on various dynamic conditions. For a given set of conditions, one specific configuration may be better than another with respect to measures such as resource consumption and performance. Here, configuration parameter values were set dynamically and the results compared with a static configuration. It was hypothesised that under non-changing conditions this would allow the system to converge on a configuration that was more suitable than any that could be set a priori. Furthermore, the system could react to a change in conditions by adopting a more appropriate configuration. Autonomic management was applied to the peer-to-peer (P2P) and data retrieval components of ASA, a distributed storage system. The effects were measured experimentally for various workload and churn patterns. The management policies and mechanisms were implemented using a generic autonomic management framework developed during this work. The motivation for both groups of experiments was to test management policies with the objective to avoid unsatisfactory situations with respect to resource consumption and performance. Such unsatisfactory situations occur when either the P2P layer or the data retrieval mechanism is configured statically. In a statically configured P2P system two unsatisfactory situations can be identified. The first arises when the frequency with which P2P node states are verified is low and membership churn is high. The P2P node state becomes inaccurate due to a high membership churn, leading to errors during the routing process and a reduction in performance. In this situation it is desirable to increase the frequency to increase P2P state accuracy. The converse situation arises when the frequency is high and churn is low. In this situation network resources are used unnecessarily, which may also reduce performance, making it desirable to decrease the frequency. In ASA’s data retrieval mechanism similar unsatisfactory situations can be identified with respect to the degree of concurrency (DOC). The DOC controls the eagerness with which multiple redundant replicas are retrieved. An unsatisfactory situation arises when the DOC is low and there is a large variation in the times taken to retrieve replicas. In this situation it is desirable to increase the DOC, because by retrieving more replicas in parallel a result can be returned to the user sooner. The converse situation arises when the DOC is high, there is little variation in retrieval time and there is a network bottleneck close to the requesting client. In this situation it is desirable to decrease the DOC, since the low variation removes any benefit in parallel retrieval, and the bottleneck means that decreasing parallelism reduces both bandwidth consumption and elapsed time for the user. The experimental evaluations of autonomic management show promising results, and suggest several future research topics. These include optimisations of the managed mechanisms, alternative management policies, different evaluation methods, and the application of developed management mechanisms to other facets of a distributed storage system. The findings of this thesis could be exploited in building other distributed storage systems that focus on harnessing storage on user workstations, since these are particularly likely to be exposed to varying, unpredictable conditions.