Motivation: Service Demands
Emergence of a true information infrastructure
- today: e-commerce, online database services, online backup, search engines, and web servers
- tomorrow: more of above (with ever-growing datasets), plus thin-client/PDA infrastructure support
Infrastructure users expect “always-on”service and constant quality of service
- infrastructure must provide fault-toleranceand performance-tolerance
- failures and slowdowns have major business impact
- e.g., recent E*Trade, Schwab outages