PERFORMABILITY EVALUATION OF FAULT-TOLERANT COMPUTER SYSTEMS USING DYQNTOOL+
For fault-tolerant computer systems (FTCS) supporting critical applications, it is of key importance to be able to answer the question of whether they indeed fulfill the quality of service requirements of their users. In particular, answers related to the combined performance and dependability of the FTCS are important. To facilitate these so-called performability studies, we present DYQNTOOL+, a performability evaluation tool based on the dynamic queuing network concept, that allows for a combined modeling of system performance and dependability. Different from other performability evaluation tools, DYQNTOOL+ combines two different modeling paradigms, i.e., queuing networks and stochastic Petri nets, for respectively the performance and the dependability aspects of the system under study. The mutual relations between these two model parts, such as workload-induced failures and performance decreases due to failures, are explicitly modeled as well. By the above choice for such a combination of modeling paradigms, the modeling can be done in greater detail, thereby often revealing system behavior that cannot be revealed otherwise. We present the dynamic queuing network modeling approach and its implementation in DYQNTOOL+, as well as illustrate its usage by addressing a number of examples.