Are Markov Models Effective for Storage Reliability Modelling?

Abstract: Continuous Time Markov Chains (CTMC) have been used extensively to model reliability of storage systems. While the exponentially distributed sojourn time of Markov models is widely known to be unrealistic (and it is necessary to consider Weibull-type models for components such as disks), recent work has also highlighted some additional infirmities with the CTMC model, such as the ability to handle repair times. Due to the memoryless property of these models, any failure or repair of one component resets the "clock" to zero with any partial repair or aging in some other subsystem forgotten. It has therefore been argued that simulation is the only accurate technique available for modelling the reliability of a storage system with multiple components. We show how both the above problematic aspects can be handled when we consider a careful set of approximations in a detailed model of the system. A detailed model has many states, and the transitions between them and the current state captures the "memory" of the various components. We model a non-exponential distribution using a sum of exponential distributions, along with the use of a CTMC solver in a probabilistic model checking tool that has support for reducing large state spaces. Furthermore, it is possible to get results close to what is obtained through simulation and at much lower cost.