Survivability recovery of information system based on component availability

A mechanism of survivability recovery, whereby component is the basic unit of being fixed, is presented for information system in this paper. Services provided are classified into complete service, acceptable service and interrupted service by the degree of dependence on failed critical component. The survivability of information system is measured by component availability. Procedure of survivability recovery can be divided into two phases in time domain. The first phase is to restore interrupted service by fixing the failed critical components. Acceptable service can be perfected by fixing the disabled non-critical components in the second phase. The experiment is carried out by applying the mechanism mentioned above in a networked teaching system. The results shows that it is effective to determine recovery actions and activating sequence, increase the capability of recovering rapidly and diversify methods of recovering survivability in information system. The work done by author has a major guiding significance in analyzing and recovering survivability for actual information systems. © 2011 IEEE.