Reliability evaluation of a computer network in cloud computing environment subject to maintenance budget

Abstract This paper measures the performance of a computer network in the cloud computing environment. To retain a good quality of service (QOS), the computer network is required to preserve a sufficient capacity level so that it can send d units of data from the source (a cloud computing center) to the sink (a set of clients) through multiple paths within time T . Thus, the maintenance action should be taken when the computer network falls to a specific state so that it cannot provide sufficient capacity to satisfy demand d . Given the maintenance budget B and time constraint T , we evaluate the probability that d units of data can be sent from the source to the sink, where the probability is referred to as the system reliability. A branch-and-bound approach including an adjusting procedure is proposed to obtain all minimal capacity vectors satisfying d , B, and T . Subsequently, the corresponding system reliability can be derived in terms of such vectors by applying the recursive sum of disjoint products algorithm.