Reliability analysis of web server cluster systemsbased on proportional hazards model

An approach for web server cluster(WSC)reliability and degradation process analysis is proposed. The reliability process is modeled as a non-homogeneous Markov process(NHMH)composed of several non-homogeneous Poisson processes(NHPPs). The arrival rate of each NHPP corresponds to the system software failure rate which is expressed using Cox’s proportional hazards model(PHM)in terms of the cumulative and instantaneous load of the software. The cumulative load refers to software cumulative execution time, and the instantaneous load denotes the rate that the users’ requests arrive at a server. The result of reliability analysis is a time-varying reliability and degradation process over the WSC lifetime. Finally, the evaluation experiment shows the effectiveness of the proposed approach.