Survivability and Fault Tolerance in the Cloud

In recent years, cloud computing has emerged as a successful model to offer computing resources in an on-demand manner for large-scale Internet services and applications. However many companies are still reluctant to embrace the cloud. This chapter provides a comprehensive study of fundamental concepts and techniques related to survivability and reliability in cloud computing environments. It first lays out key concepts of the cloud computing model and concepts related to survivability. Then it presents an overview of the outcomes of recent analyses of failures in the cloud. The chapter further reviews and discusses existing techniques aimed at improving fault tolerance and availability of cloud services. The ultimate goal is to develop a comprehensive understanding of state-of-the-art solutions for improving cloud survivability and reliability, and to provide insights into the critical challenges to be addressed in the future.