Measuring Fault Tolerance with the FTAPE Fault Injection Tool

This paper describes FTAPE (Fault Tolerance And Performance Evaluator), a tool that can be used to compare fault-tolerant computers. The major parts of the tool include a system-wide fault injector, a workload generator, and a workload activity measurement tool. The workload creates high stress conditions on the machine. Using stress-based injection, the fault injector is able to utilize knowledge of the workload activity to ensure a high level of fault propagation. The errors/fault ratio, performance degradation, and number of system crashes are presented as measures of fault tolerance.

[1]  Daniel P. Siewiorek,et al.  FIAT-fault injection based automated testing environment , 1988, [1988] The Eighteenth International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing. Digest of Papers.

[2]  Johan Karlsson,et al.  Evaluation of error detection schemes using fault injection by heavy-ion radiation , 1989, [1989] The Nineteenth International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing. Digest of Papers.

[3]  Ravishankar K. Iyer,et al.  Experimental analysis of computer system dependability , 1996 .

[4]  Jean Arlat,et al.  Fault Injection for Dependability Validation: A Methodology and Some Applications , 1990, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[5]  Ravishankar K. Iyer,et al.  Error latency measurements in symbolic architectures , 1991 .

[6]  Ravishankar K. Iyer,et al.  FINE: A Fault Injection and Monitoring Environment for Tracing the UNIX System Behavior under Faults , 1993, IEEE Trans. Software Eng..

[7]  G. B. Finelli.  Characterization of Fault Recovery through Fault Injection on FTMP , 1987, IEEE Transactions on Reliability.

[8]  Ravishankar K. Iyer,et al.  Measurement and modeling of computer reliability as affected by system activity , 1986, TOCS.

[9]  Ravishankar K. Iyer,et al.  FOCUS: An Experimental Environment for Fault Sensitivity Analysis , 1992, IEEE Trans. Computers.

[10]  Johan Karlsson,et al.  Fault injection into VHDL models: the MEFISTO tool , 1994 .

[11]  Luke T. Young,et al.  A Hybrid Monitor Assisted Fault Injection Environment , 1993 .

[12]  Ravishankar K. Iyer,et al.  DEFINE: a distributed fault injection and monitoring environment , 1994, Proceedings of IEEE Workshop on Fault-Tolerant Parallel and Distributed Systems.

[13]  E. W. Czeck,et al.  On the prediction of fault behavior based on workload , 1991 .

[14]  D. Jewett,et al.  Integrity S2: A Fault-Tolerant Unix Platform , 1991, Twenty-Fifth International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing, 1995, ' Highlights from Twenty-Five Years'..