Distributed-program reliability analysis: complexity and efficient algorithms

This paper investigates the problem of distributed-program reliability in various classes of distributed computing systems. This problem is computationally intractable for arbitrary distributed computing systems, even when it is restricted to the class of star distributed computing systems. One solvable case for star distributed computing systems is identified, in which data files are distributed with respective to a consecutive property; a polynomial-time algorithm is developed for this case. A linear-time algorithm is developed to test whether or not an arbitrary star distributed computing system has this consecutive file distribution property. Efficient algorithms may still be sought for computing lower and upper bounds on the distributed program reliability for arbitrary distributed computing systems.