RESISTing reliability degradation through proactive reconfiguration

Abstract

Situated software systems are an emerging class of systems that are predominantly pervasive, embedded, and mobile. They are marked with a high degree of unpredictability and dynamism in the execution context. At the same time, such systems often need to satisfy strict reliability requirements. Most current software reliability analysis approaches are not suitable for situated software systems. We propose an approach geared to such systems, which continuously furnishes refined reliability predictions at runtime by incorporating various sources of information. The reliability predictions are leveraged to proactively place the software in the optimal configuration with respect to changing conditions. Our approach considers two representative architectural reconfiguration decisions that impact the system's reliability: reallocation of components to processes and changing the architectural style. We have realized the approach as part of a framework intended for mission-critical settings, called REsilient SItuated SofTware system (RESIST), and evaluated it using a mobile emergency response system.