Design for Reliability: Information and Computer-Based Systems / Edition 1

by Eric Bauer

Overview

System reliability, availability and robustness are often not well understood by system architects, engineers and developers. They often don't understand what drives customer's availability expectations, how to frame verifiable availability/robustness requirements, how to manage and budget availability/robustness, how to methodically architect and design systems that meet robustness requirements, and so on. The book takes a very pragmatic approach of framing reliability and robustness as a functional aspect of a system so that architects, designers, developers and testers can address it as a concrete, functional attribute of a system, rather than an abstract, non-functional notion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780470604656
Publisher:	Wiley
Publication date:	10/04/2010
Pages:	348
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

ERIC BAUER is Reliability Engineering Manager in the Wireline Division of Alcatel-Lucent. After two decades of software development experience, he joined the Lucent reliability team to lead a reliability group, and has since worked reliability engineering on a variety of wireless and wireline products and solutions. Mr. Bauer currently focuses on increasing the reliability of Alcatel-Lucent's IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) solution and the network elements that comprise the IMS solution. He has been awarded twelve U.S. patents, coauthored Practical System Reliability (Wiley), and has published several papers in the Bell Labs Technical Journal.

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Table of Contents

Figures xiii

Tables xv

Preface xvii

Acknowledgments xxi

Part 1 Reliability Basics

1 Reliability and Availability Concepts 3

1.1 Reliability and Availability 3

1.2 Faults, Errors, and Failures 5

1.3 Error Severity 6

1.4 Failure Recovery 7

1.5 Highly Available Systems 9

1.6 Quantifying Availability 12

1.7 Outage Attributability 14

1.8 Hardware Reliability 16

1.9 Software Reliability 22

1.10 Problems 28

1.11 For Further Study 29

2 System Basics 31

2.1 Hardware and Software 31

2.2 External Entities 35

2.3 System Management 37

2.4 System Outages 43

2.5 Service Quality 47

2.6 Total Cost of Ownership 49

2.7 Problems 56

3 What Can Go Wrong 57

3.1 Failures in the Real World 57

3.2 Eight-Ingredient Framework 59

3.3 Mapping Ingredients to Error Categories 63

3.4 Applying Error Categories 66

3.5 Error Category: Field-Replaceable Unit (FRU) Hardware 68

3.6 Error Category: Programming Errors 70

3.7 Error Category: Data Error 71

3.8 Error Category: Redundancy 73

3.9 Error Category: System Power 74

3.10 Error Category: Network 75

3.11 Error Category: Application Protocol 76

3.12 Error Category: Procedures 77

3.13 Summary 79

3.14 Problems 80

3.15 For Further Study 80

Part 2 Reliability Concepts

4 Failure Containment and Redundancy 85

4.1 Units of Design 85

4.2 Failure Recovery Groups 91

4.3 Redundancy 92

4.4 Summary 96

4.5 Problems 97

4.6 For Further Study 97

5 Robust Design Principles 99

5.1 Robust Design Principles 99

5.2 Robust Protocols 101

5.3 Robust Concurrency Controls 103

5.4 Overload Control 103

5.5 Process, Resource, and Throughput Monitoring 108

5.6 Data Auditing 109

5.7 Fault Correlation 110

5.8 Failed Error Detection, Isolation, or Recovery 111

5.9 Geographic Redundancy 112

5.10 Security, Availability, and System Robustness 114

5.11 Procedural Considerations 119

5.12 Problems 130

5.13 For Further Study 130

6 Error Detection 131

6.1 Detecting Field-Replaceable Unit (FRU) Hardware Faults 131

6.2 Detecting Programming and Data Faults 132

6.3 Detecting Redundancy Failures 134

6.4 Detecting Power Failures 139

6.5 Detecting Networking Failures 141

6.6 Detecting Application Protocol Failures 142

6.7 Detecting Procedural Failures 144

6.8 Problems 144

6.9 For Further Study 144

7 Analyzing and Modeling Reliability and Robustness 145

7.1 Reliability Block Diagrams 145

7.2 Qualitative Model of Redundancy 147

7.3 Failure Mode and Effects Analysis 149

7.4 Availability Modeling 151

7.5 Planned Downtime 165

7.6 Problems 168

7.7 For Further Study 168

Part 3 Design for Reliability

8 Reliability Requirements 171

8.1 Background 171

8.2 Defining Service Outages 172

8.3 Service Availability Requirements 175

8.4 Detailed Service Availability Requirements 177

8.5 Service Reliability Requirements 180

8.6 Triangulating Reliability Requirements 181

8.7 Problems 182

9 Reliability Analysis 185

9.1 Step 1: Enumerate Recoverable Modules 186

9.2 Step 2: Construct Reliability Block Diagrams 191

9.3 Step 3: Characterize Impact of Recovery 193

9.4 Step 4: Characterize Impact of Procedures 198

9.5 Step 5: Audit Adequacy of Automatic Failure Detection and Recovery 200

9.6 Step 6: Consider Failures of Robustness Mechanisms 201

9.7 Step 7: Prioritizing Gaps 202

9.8 Reliability of Sourced Modules and Components 202

9.9 Problems 206

10 Reliability Budgeting and Modeling 207

10.1 Downtime Categories 208

10.2 Service Downtime Budget 209

10.3 Availability Modeling 212

10.4 Update Downtime Budget 213

10.5 Robustness Latency Budgets 215

10.6 Problems 218

11 Robustness and Stability Testing 219

11.1 Robustness Testing 219

11.2 Context of Robustness Testing 220

11.3 Factoring Robustness Testing 221

11.4 Robustness Testing in the Development Process 222

11.5 Robustness Testing Techniques 223

11.6 Selecting Robustness Test Cases 232

11.7 Analyzing Robustness Test Results 233

11.8 Stability Testing 234

11.9 Release Criteria 240

11.10 Problems 243

12 Closing the Loop 245

12.1 Analyzing Field Outage Events 245

12.2 Reliability Roadmapping 255

12.3 Problems 260

13 Design for Reliability Case Study 263

13.1 System Context 263

13.2 System Reliability Requirements 268

13.3 Reliability Analysis 270

13.4 Downtime Budgeting 283

13.5 Availability Modeling 284

13.6 Reliability Roadmap 286

13.7 Robustness Testing 287

13.8 Stability Testing 289

13.9 Reliability Review 290

13.10 Reliability Report 291

13.11 Release Criteria 292

13.12 Field Data Analysis 293

14 Conclusion 295

14.1 Overview of Design for Reliability 295

14.2 Concluding Remarks 299

14.3 Problems 300

15 Appendix: Assessing Design for Reliability Diligence 301

15.1 Assessment Methodology 302

15.2 Reliability Requirements 304

15.3 Reliability Analysis 306

15.4 Reliability Modeling and Budgeting 307

15.5 Robustness Testing 308

15.6 Stability Testing 310

15.7 Release Criteria 311

15.8 Field Availability 312

15.9 Reliability Roadmap 313

15.10 Hardware Reliability 313

Abbreviations 315

References 317

Photo Credits 319

About the Author 321

Index 323

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Thus, I highly recommend this book to undergraduate students and junior researchers entering the reliability studies field. Though experts may not find the book to be very interesting, they will likely find it useful as a basis for lecturing, and as a good source of insightful, fundamental ideas." (Computing Reviews, 16 May 2011)

"The book takes a very pragmatic approach of framing reliability and robustness as a functional aspect of a system so that architects, designers, developers and testers can address it as a concrete, functional attribute of a system, rather than an abstract, non-functional notion." (Forums Digital Media Net, 16 March 2011)

Editorial Reviews

"Thus, I highly recommend this book to undergraduate students and junior researchers entering the reliability studies field. Though experts may not find the book to be very interesting, they will likely find it useful as a basis for lecturing, and as a good source of insightful, fundamental ideas." (Computing Reviews, 16 May 2011)

"The book takes a very pragmatic approach of framing reliability and robustness as a functional aspect of a system so that architects, designers, developers and testers can address it as a concrete, functional attribute of a system, rather than an abstract, non-functional notion." (Forums Digital Media Net, 16 March 2011)

 

From the Publisher