Error Containment

Many computer systems today need to operate with high availability. These include web servers, network and telephony devices such as routers and switches, e-commerce applications, and many others. No software is defect free, and neither is the environment in which the software operates. As a result errors happen. To prevent errors from causing failures they must be mitigated. A cornerstone of error mitigation is error containment. The goal is to limit the parts of the system that the error infects with its incorrectness. This paper discusses ways of containing errors.