Fault-tolerant computing on cluster of workstations

Summary form only given. Employing queuing theory, closed form solutions for the response time of fault tolerant clusters of workstations are obtained. Workstations (nodes) in the cluster are divided into two sets: active set and back up set. Fault tolerance is achieved by having a set of active nodes to replicate their services at a set of backup nodes. Active nodes periodically checkpoint their status on the backups. If an active node fails, one of the backups takes over and joins the active set. Two immediate repair mechanisms are considered to repair faulty nodes in the system. In addition to their closed form formats, the analytical results have several advantages over those presented in the previous work. Unlike previous work in this area, there is no need to solve a set of recursive equations and the results reveal much of the characteristics of the system.