Fault Tolerance in the Cloud

As cloud computing systems continue to grow in scale and complexity, it is of critical importance to ensure the stability, availability, and reliability of such systems. However, cloud failure could be induced by varying execution environments, addition and removal of system components, frequent updates and upgrades, online repairs, and intensive workload on servers. The reliability and availability of a cloud could be compromised easily if proactive measures are not taken to tackle the possible failures. To achieve higher reliability, and as a countermeasure for faults and failures, fault tolerance in cloud computing is vital. This chapter discuss fault tolerance in the cloud and illustrate various fault-tolerance strategies. It also categories fault tolerance measures on the basis of their methodology, programming framework, environment, and fault type they can detect.