Teach Computer Science

Reliability in
computer systems

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Glossary

A copy of all data and files that is used in

Backup
case of failure.

Systems that are highly reliable as their

Critical system failure may cause great impact on human
lives
A programming technique that adds
Defensive checkpoints which warns the user in case
programming the program is not working in the desired
manner.

The process of getting back the lost data

Disaster recovery
from the back-up after a system failure.

The number of times a system breaks down

Downtime
or spends out of action.

A system that operates at a reduced level

Fail-soft system
even after some component failures.

A property that enables a system to operate

Fault tolerance properly even if the system undergoes one
or more failures.
This parameter is calculated by taking the
Mean time between
average of the time between failures of a
failures
system.
The time duration in which the system is
Mean time to failure expected to continue its operation before
system failure.

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 The amount of time the system has operated
Number of hours
without reporting any problems.

The percentage of time for which the service

Percentage of time was available and operational during a
particular month.

Redundant array of independent disks is a

data storage technology in which multiple
RAID
physical disk drives are used to store
redundant data.

Duplication of critical parts of a computer

Redundancy
system to improve the reliability

Attribute that denotes consistent

Reliability
performance according to specifications.

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