Continuous service provisioning is a key feature of modern hardware und software server systems. These systems achieve their level of user-perceived availability through a set of formal and technical approaches, commonly summarized under the term dependability.

Dependability is defined as the trustworthiness of hardware and software systems, so that reliance can be placed on the service they provide. The main dependability attributes commonly known and accepted are availability, reliability, safety, and security.

The Dependable Systems course gives an introduction into theoretical foundations, common building blocks and example implementations for dependable IT components and systems. The focus is on reliability and availability aspects of dependable systems, such as reliability analysis, fault tolerance, fault models or failure prediction. Amongst other things, the following topics are covered:

Dependability definitions and metrics
Design patterns for fault tolerance
Analytical evaluation of system dependability
Hardware dependability approaches
Software dependability approaches
Latest research topics