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Contribution to Book
Runtime Failure Mode Prediction from System Error Logs
Proceedings of the 18th IEEE International Conference on Engineering of Complex Systems (2013)
  • Atef Shalan, Georgia Southern University
  • Mohammad Zulkernine, Queen’s University
Abstract
Predicting potential failure occurrences during runtime is important to achieve system resilience and avoid hazardous consequences of failures. Existing failure prediction techniques in software systems involve forecasting failure counts, effects, and occurrences. Most of these techniques predict failures that may occur in future runtime intervals and only few techniques predict them at runtime. However, they do not estimate the failure modes and they require extensive instrumentation of source code. In this paper, we provide an approach for predicting failure occurrences and modes during system runtime. Our methodology utilizes system error log records to craft runtime error-spread signature. Using system error log history, we determine a predictive function (estimator) for each failure mode based on these signatures. This estimator can be used to predict a failure mode eventuality measure (a probability of failure mode occurrence) from system error log during system runtime. An experimental evaluation using PostgreSQL opensource database is provided. Our results show high accuracy of failure occurrence and mode predictions.

Publication Date
September 19, 2013
Publisher
IEEE Xplore
ISBN
978-0-7695-5007-7
DOI
10.1109/ICECCS.2013.41
Publisher Statement
Citation Information
Atef Shalan and Mohammad Zulkernine. "Runtime Failure Mode Prediction from System Error Logs" SingaporeProceedings of the 18th IEEE International Conference on Engineering of Complex Systems (2013) p. 232 - 241
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/atef-shalan/25/