A New Method to Improve the Dependability of Key Nodes in Pervasive Computing Environment

Pervasive computing has been a hot point in researches for decades which integrates digital and physical devices in everyday life. The availability of key nodes which provide service is momentous. HA Cluster computing systems have become significantly practical for being server node. The availability of heartbeats, a main fault detection method, plays a momentous role in existing HA systems. However, the HA system may work on incorrect status when a fault exists in heartbeat links in the HA architecture. This paper presents a HA system with an independent monitor-based mechanism which monitors the leader nodes and manage the system to avoid the fault operation resulting from failures of heartbeat links. Its architecture is discussed, and the dependability of the system is analyzed by a continuous time Markov chain model; the dependability of a HA system and the HA system with an independent monitor module are compared. The results show that the proposed method is reasonable and will significantly improve the availability of the server node to fulfill the requirement in pervasive computing environment.