Beyond the Bugs
Design faults are not the only source of downtime. Human operators can also be a significant contributor to system failure. In Jim Gray's book Why Do Computers Stop and What Can Be Done About It?, a study of more than 2,000 Tandem NonStop systems revealed that system administration, which includes operator actions, system configuration, and system maintenance, was the main source of failures at 42%. People make mistakes far more frequently than computers.
Systems can also fail from environmental faults. According to the National Power Laboratory, each year the typical computer location experiences 36 spikes, 392 voltage fluctuations, 128 voltage surges, and 15 blackouts. More than half of the service calls and downtime experienced ...
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