Abstract:

An external factor is an added condition beyond the normal load of the system affecting the system’s success. Each external factor has an influence on system components, which may lead to system failure. To decrease the effects of different states of the external factors on system components, multistate protections are established to protect the components from the effects of the external factors. The protection states are dependent on the external factor state. When a protection is at different states, the protection may be damaged. In this paper, considering the joint effect of the external factors and protections on system components, a measure of states of the protections on the system reliability is introduced to identify which protection level has the most important influence on the system success. Based on the importance values of different protections, appropriate actions can be applied in system components to improve the system protection and reliability and reduce the effects of external factors. At last, an example of a computer server system is used to demonstrate the proposed method.