Performability Modeling of Distributed Systems and Its Formal Methods Representation

Abstract

A distributed system is a complex system. Developing complex systems is a demanding task when attempting to achieve functional and non-functional properties such as synchronization, communication, fault tolerance. These properties impose immense complexities on the design, development, and implementation of the system that incur massive effort and cost. Therefore, it is vital to ensure that the system must satisfy the functional and non-functional properties. Once a distributed system is developed, it is very difficult and demanding to conduct any modification in its architecture. As a result, the quantitative analysis of a complex distributed system at the early stage of the development process is always an essential and intricate endeavor. To meet the above challenge, this chapter introduces an extensive framework for performability evaluation of a distributed system. The goal of the performability modeling framework is to consider the behavioral change of the system components due to failures. This reveals how such behavioral changes affect the system performance.