Analysis of software halts in the tandem GUARDIAN operating system

Author

Lee, Inhwan ; Iyer, Ravishankar K.

Author_Institution

Coordinated Sci. Lab., Illinois Univ., Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA

fYear

1992

fDate

7-10 Oct 1992

Firstpage

227

Lastpage

236

Abstract

A systematic methodology is given to investigate the dependability of operational software. The methodology combines several techniques. Time series analysis is used to characterize the occurrence of software failures. Markov reward modeling is used to determine the loss in service due to failures of software components, and to identify major bottlenecks. The effectiveness of built-in fault tolerance is also evaluated. The methodology is illustrated using the software halt data from the Tandem GUARDIAN operating system. The results show that the occurrences of software halts are not correlated with each other in time. Interrupt a handling and memory management are found to be the major bottlenecks in the measured system. The fault tolerance in the measured system was shown to reduce the service loss by nearly 90%

Keywords

fault tolerant computing; interrupts; operating systems (computers); software reliability; Markov reward modeling; Tandem GUARDIAN operating system; built-in fault tolerance; major bottlenecks; memory management; operational software; service loss; software failures; software halt data; systematic methodology; Failure analysis; Fault tolerance; Fault tolerant systems; Hardware; Operating systems; Software measurement; Software performance; Software quality; Software systems; Time series analysis;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Software Reliability Engineering, 1992. Proceedings., Third International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Research Triangle Park, NC

Print_ISBN

0-8186-2975-4

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ISSRE.1992.285887

Filename

285887