reed-solomon

reed-solomon

Reed-Solomon erasure coding in pure Javascript with an optional C++ binding for multi-core throughput. A port of the JavaReedSolomon library released by Backblaze. For an introduction to erasure coding, see the post by Brian Beach on the Backblaze blog. Special thanks to Backblaze.

License

reed-solomon is licensed under the MIT License, which means that you can use it in your own projects for free. You can even use it in commercial projects.

Installation

Linux, OS X

This will compile the native binding automatically:

npm install reed-solomon

Windows

This will skip compiling the native binding automatically:

npm install --ignore-scripts reed-solomon

Efficiency

Data redundancy is typically achieved through mirroring or replication at a cost of 3x the original data. With Reed-Solomon erasure codes, you can achieve better redundancy at a cost of only 1.5x the original data. Various storage efficiencies of 1.4x and 1.18x are also possible. You can trade storage efficiency, redundancy and recovery time by fine-tuning the number of data shards and parity shards you use.

Performance

reed-solomon includes a Javascript binding as well as an optional native binding. The native binding executes asynchronously in Node's threadpool for multi-core throughput and scalability without blocking the event loop:

           CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E3-1230 V2 @ 3.30GHz
         Cores: 8
       Threads: 4

============================================================

        Encode: 10000 x (Data=10 Parity=4 Shard=256)
    Javascript: Latency: 0.028ms Throughput: 88.89 MB/s
        Native: Latency: 0.044ms Throughput: 224.56 MB/s

        Encode: 10000 x (Data=10 Parity=4 Shard=1024)
    Javascript: Latency: 0.064ms Throughput: 159.75 MB/s
        Native: Latency: 0.054ms Throughput: 747.45 MB/s

        Encode: 10000 x (Data=10 Parity=4 Shard=4096)
    Javascript: Latency: 0.207ms Throughput: 197.02 MB/s
        Native: Latency: 0.124ms Throughput: 1312.82 MB/s

        Encode: 2048 x (Data=10 Parity=4 Shard=65536)
    Javascript: Latency: 3.099ms Throughput: 211.43 MB/s
        Native: Latency: 1.637ms Throughput: 1597.83 MB/s

        Encode: 1024 x (Data=10 Parity=4 Shard=131072)
    Javascript: Latency: 6.202ms Throughput: 211.27 MB/s
        Native: Latency: 3.357ms Throughput: 1558.86 MB/s

        Encode: 128 x (Data=10 Parity=4 Shard=1048576)
    Javascript: Latency: 51.338ms Throughput: 204.23 MB/s
        Native: Latency: 26.021ms Throughput: 1595.93 MB/s

============================================================

        Decode: 10000 x (Data=10 Parity=4 Shard=256)
    Javascript: Latency: 0.068ms Throughput: 37.10 MB/s
        Native: Latency: 0.246ms Throughput: 41.36 MB/s

        Decode: 10000 x (Data=10 Parity=4 Shard=1024)
    Javascript: Latency: 0.095ms Throughput: 107.56 MB/s
        Native: Latency: 0.271ms Throughput: 150.59 MB/s

        Decode: 10000 x (Data=10 Parity=4 Shard=4096)
    Javascript: Latency: 0.196ms Throughput: 208.13 MB/s
        Native: Latency: 0.264ms Throughput: 618.73 MB/s

        Decode: 2048 x (Data=10 Parity=4 Shard=65536)
    Javascript: Latency: 2.390ms Throughput: 274.03 MB/s
        Native: Latency: 1.397ms Throughput: 1871.93 MB/s

        Decode: 1024 x (Data=10 Parity=4 Shard=131072)
    Javascript: Latency: 4.656ms Throughput: 281.32 MB/s
        Native: Latency: 2.683ms Throughput: 1950.84 MB/s

        Decode: 128 x (Data=10 Parity=4 Shard=1048576)
    Javascript: Latency: 36.400ms Throughput: 288.02 MB/s
        Native: Latency: 24.051ms Throughput: 1711.96 MB/s

Native Binding (Optional)

The native binding will be installed automatically when installing reed-solomon without the --ignore-scripts argument. The Javascript binding will be used if the native binding could not be compiled or is not available. To compile the native binding manually after installing reed-solomon, install node-gyp globally:

sudo npm install node-gyp -g

Then build the binding from within the reed-solomon module directory:

cd node_modules/reed-solomon
node-gyp rebuild

Usage

Encoding Parity Shards

var ReedSolomon = require('reed-solomon');

// Specify the number of data shards (<=30):
var dataShards = 6;

// Specify the number of parity shards (<=30):
var parityShards = 3; // Protect against loss of any 3 data or parity shards.

// The total number of shards must be at most 31:
var totalShards = dataShards + parityShards;

// Specify the total length of each shard in bytes:
var shardLength = 1024 * 1024;

var buffer = Buffer.concat([
  // Non-ReedSolomon header data:
  <Buffer (16)>,
  // Data shards:
  <Buffer (shardLength)>,
  <Buffer (shardLength)>,
  <Buffer (shardLength)>,
  <Buffer (shardLength)>,
  <Buffer (shardLength)>,
  <Buffer (shardLength)>,
  // Parity shards:
  <Buffer (shardLength)>,
  <Buffer (shardLength)>,
  <Buffer (shardLength)>,
  // Non-ReedSolomon footer data:
  <Buffer (...)>
]);

// Specify the offset into the buffer at which shards begin:
// This allows you to include non-ReedSolomon header data in the buffer.
var bufferOffset = 16;

// Specify the size after this offset of all shards:
// This allows you to include non-ReedSolomon footer data in the buffer.
var bufferSize = shardLength * totalShards;

// Specify the offset into each shard from which to encode/decode:
// This allows you to include non-ReedSolomon header data in each shard.
var shardOffset = 0;

// Specify the size after this offset:
// This allows you to include non-ReedSolomon footer data in each shard.
var shardSize = shardLength - shardOffset;

// Instantiate a ReedSolomon instance:
// This can be used concurrently across many `encode()`/`decode()` calls.
var rs = new ReedSolomon(dataShards, parityShards);

// Encode all parity shards:
rs.encode(
  buffer,
  bufferOffset,
  bufferSize,
  shardLength,
  shardOffset,
  shardSize,
  function(error) {
    if (error) throw error;
    // Parity shards now contain parity data.
  }
);

Decoding Corrupted Shards

// Corrupt a data shard:
buffer[0] = 255;
// Corrupt a parity shard:
buffer[dataShards + parityShards - 1] = 255;
// We still have enough parity to corrupt another shard.

// Specify each corrupted shard according to its index in the array:
// If a corrupted shard is not specified, the result will be wrong.
var targets = 0;
targets |= (1 << 0); // Data shard at index 0 needs to be decoded.
targets |= (1 << 8); // Parity shard at index 8 needs to be decoded.

// Decode the corrupted data and parity shards:
rs.decode(
  buffer,
  bufferOffset,
  bufferSize,
  shardLength,
  shardOffset,
  shardSize,
  targets,
  function(error) {
    if (error) throw error;
    // Data shard at index 0 has been repaired.
    // Parity shard at index 8 has been repaired.
  }
);

Tests

reed-solomon ships with extensive tests, including a long-running fuzz test.

To test the native and Javascript bindings:

node test.js

Benchmark

To benchmark the native and Javascript bindings:

node benchmark.js