Distributed storage systems apply erasure-tolerant codes to guarantee reliable access to data despite failures of storage resources. While many codes can be mapped to XOR operations and efficiently implemented on common microprocessors, only a certain number of codes are usually implemented in a certain system (out of a wide variety of different codes). The ability to include new codes easily, to exchange codes and finally to select codes for several types of data is desirable. To provide this flexibility, a parameterization is used which allows the definition of different XOR based codes, and beyond different styles of en- and decoding. The parameters include (i) the assignment of data and redundancy elements to the storage resources and (ii) a description of en- and decoding algorithms with XOR based equations. The parameters of a certain code can be changed and in addition a wide variety of codes can be described and included in a storage system implementation. The proposed parameterization adopts the ability of codes like EVEN- ODD, Cauchy-R/S and Hover codes to map to distributed resources. Furthermore, en- and decoding algorithms can be described differently, either for minimal coding cost or for minimal coding time on parallel systems.