Measurement-based evaluation of operating system fault tolerance

Author

Lee, Inhwan ; Tang, Dong ; Iyer, Ravishankar K. ; Hsueh, Mei-Chen

Author_Institution

Illinois Univ., Urbana, IL, USA

Volume

42

Issue

2

fYear

1993

fDate

6/1/1993 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

238

Lastpage

249

Abstract

The authors demonstrate a methodology for evaluating the fault-tolerance characteristics of operational software and illustrate it through case studies of three operating systems: the Tandem GUARDIAN fault-tolerant system, the VAX/VMS distributed system, and the IBM/MVS system. Based on measurements from these systems, software error characteristics are investigated by analyzing error distributions and correlation. Two levels of models are developed to analyze the error and recovery processes inside an operating system and the interactions among multiple copies of an operating system running in a distributed environment. Reward analysis is used to evaluate the loss of service due to software errors and the effect of fault-tolerant techniques implemented in the systems

Keywords

fault tolerant computing; operating systems (computers); performance evaluation; software reliability; IBM/MVS; Tandem GUARDIAN; VAX/VMS distributed system; correlation; distributions; fault tolerant computing; loss of service; operating systems; reward analysis; software error; software reliability; Error analysis; Fault tolerance; Fault tolerant systems; Hardware; Operating systems; Reliability engineering; Software measurement; Software quality; Software systems; Voice mail;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Reliability, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9529

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/24.229493

Filename

229493