|
Fail-fast
In systems design, a fail-fast system is one which immediately reports at its interface any condition that is likely to indicate a failure. Fail-fast systems are usually designed to stop normal operation rather than attempt to continue a possibly flawed process. Such designs often check the system's state at several points in an operation, so any failures can be detected early. The responsibility of a fail-fast module is detecting errors, then letting the next-highest level of the system handle them. Hardware and software Fail-fast systems or modules are desirable in several circumstances: * Fail-fast architectures are based on an error handling policy where any detected error or non-contemplated state makes the system fail (fast). In some sense the error handling policy is the opposite of that used in a fault-tolerant system. In a fault-tolerant system a error handling policy is established to have redundant components and move computation requests to alive components when some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fault-tolerant System
Fault tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of one or more faults within some of its components. If its operating quality decreases at all, the decrease is proportional to the severity of the failure, as compared to a naively designed system, in which even a small failure can cause total breakdown. Fault tolerance is particularly sought after in high-availability, Mission critical, mission-critical, or even life-critical systems. The ability of maintaining functionality when portions of a system break down is referred to as graceful degradation. A fault-tolerant design enables a system to continue its intended operation, possibly at a reduced level, rather than failing completely, when some part of the system failure, fails. The term is most commonly used to describe computer systems designed to continue more or less fully operational with, perhaps, a reduction in throughput or an increase in response time (tech ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
