Fault tolerant system design in the concept exploration stage of a mission critical computing system

As the DoD enters a new era of weapon systems procurement it faces the critical question of how to manage and procure dependable and cost effective, mission critical computing systems. Program offices must, within the extreme time pressures of modern weapon systems development, apply fault tolerant systems design principles early in the design cycle before major resources are committed to a particular systems architecture. This paper describes the dependability evaluations and trade studies that should be done in the concept exploration stage of a mission critical computing system. These studies are considered from the point of view of a government program office in charge of the RFP requirements and Statement Of Work (SOW) design review and milestone deliverables. This paper will describe a dependability paradigm that involves the interplay between the analysis of field failure data, analytic and functional modeling and fault injection experiments. The paper will then outline the dependability requirements and evaluation criteria for the System Requirements Review (SRR) and System Design Review (SDR) that flow from this paradigm.