Experimental study of software dependability

There is trend of increasing demand for highly dependable software systems. The factors that influence the dependability of software systems include software faults and hardware faults. To improve software dependability, it is necessary to understand the characteristics of these faults and how they affect software systems. In this study, a distributed fault injection and monitoring environment (DEFINE) has been developed. It consists of a target system, a fault injector, a software monitor, a workload generator, a controller, and several analysis utilities. DEFINE can inject software faults as well as hardware faults, can trace fault propagation in software systems and among machines, can monitor whether faults are activated and when the faults are activated, and has accurate time control. The fault models used are extracted from the results of field error data analyses and fault simulations. Fault injection experiments on the UNIX kernel (SunOS 4.1.2) and the Sun Network File System are conducted to study fault impact and to investigate fault propagation. Three kinds of fault injections are conducted: uniform fault injection, biased fault injection, and path-based fault injection. Based on the experimental results, fault propagation models have been developed for both hardware and software faults, and transient Markov reward analysis has been performed to evaluate the loss of performance after a fault is injected.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Kao, Wei-lun

Contributors dc:contributor

• Iyer, Ravishankar K.

• Computer Science

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1994 Kao, Wei-lun

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9512420
(UMI)AAI9512420

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/21286