An Approach to Experimentally Obtain Service Dependability Characteristics of the Jgroup/ARM System

Jgroup/ARM is a middleware framework for operating dependable distributed applications based on Java. Jgroup integrates the distributed object models of Java RMI and Jini with the object group communication paradigm, enabling the construction of groups of replicated server objects that provide dependable services to clients. ARM provide automated mechanisms for distributing replicas to host processors and recovering from host and replica failures. This paper describe an approach based on stratified sampling combined with fault injections for estimating the dependability attributes of a service deployed using the Jgroup/ARM middleware framework. A first experimental evaluation is performed focusing on a service provided by a triplicated server, and indicative predictions of various dependability attributes of the service are obtained. The results of the evaluation show that a very high availability and MTBF may be achieved for services provided by Jgroup/ARM. The main contributor to service failures are remaining deficiencies in the platform.