A Simulation Model for Evaluating Distributed Systems Dependability

TL;DR

This paper introduces an extended simulation model based on MONARC to evaluate the dependability of distributed systems, focusing on reliability, safety, security, and maintainability, aiding in system design and analysis.

Contribution

The paper extends the MONARC simulation model to include dependability metrics and failure event injection, enabling comprehensive evaluation of distributed system strategies.

Findings

Simulation experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the extended model.

Discrete-event simulation with MONARC is efficient and scalable.

The model supports testing of redundancy and security strategies.

Abstract

In this paper we present a new simulation model designed to evaluate the dependability in distributed systems. This model extends the MONARC simulation model with new capabilities for capturing reliability, safety, availability, security, and maintainability requirements. The model has been implemented as an extension of the multithreaded, process oriented simulator MONARC, which allows the realistic simulation of a wide-range of distributed system technologies, with respect to their specific components and characteristics. The extended simulation model includes the necessary components to inject various failure events, and provides the mechanisms to evaluate different strategies for replication, redundancy procedures, and security enforcement mechanisms, as well. The results obtained in simulation experiments presented in this paper probe that the use of discrete-event simulators, such as MONARC, in the design and development of distributed systems is appealing due to their efficiency and scalability.