Common MTBF Misconceptions
MTBF is commonly confused with a component's useful life, even though the two concepts are not related in any way. For example, a battery may have a useful life of four hours and an MTBF of 100,000 hours. These figures indicate that in a population of 100,000 batteries, there will be approximately one battery failure every hour during a single battery's four-hour life span. By contrast, a 64-processor server platform may last 50,000 hours before it enters its wear-out period, while its MTBF value may only be 2,000 hours.
Another common misconception is to assume the MTBF value is higher in a system that implements component redundancy. Although component redundancy can increase the system MTBF, it does quite the opposite ...
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