Maintainability Considerations in a Fault Tolerant/Faultproof Systems Design

The maintainability, reliability, and availability of a computer system are closely bonded to insure continuing service of a system. The ability of a system to tolerate failures or faults while operating is a principal requirement of a fault tolerant system. A fault tolerant system's design must incorporate considerations for maintenance and reliability in order to provide its ultimate requirement-available operation. These factors are considered in the design philosophy presented in this paper, identified as FAULTPROOF. FAULTPROOF design incorporates redundancy, reliability, maintainability, and adaptability to augment normally accepted fault tolerant design. The design approach described utilizes a hierarchical interconnection mechanism, Intelligent Networked Partitioning, to isolate faulted components.