Fault injection spot-checks computer system dependability

Abstract

Computer-based systems are expected to be more and more dependable. For that, they have to operate correctly even in the presence of faults, and this fault tolerance of theirs must be thoroughly tested by the injection of faults both real and artificial. Users should start to request reports from manufacturers on the outcomes of such experiments, and on the mechanisms built into systems to handle faults. To inject artificial physical faults, fault injection offers a reasonably mature option today, with Swift tools being preferred for most applications because of their flexibility and low cost. To inject software bugs, although some promising ideas are being researched, no established technique yet exists. In any case, establishing computer system dependability benchmarks would make tests much easier and enable comparison of results across different machines.