Software Aging and Rejuvenation Strategies in Computing Systems
Summary
Software aging refers to the progressive performance degradation and increasing failure rate of long-running software systems, driven by resource exhaustion, unreleased memory, data corruption and cumulative numerical errors. As critical infrastructures and cloud services demand ever-higher availability, proactive strategies known as software rejuvenation have been devised to forestall or reverse the effects of aging. Rejuvenation techniques range from simple scheduled restarts and checkpointing to more sophisticated state-cleansing, live migration of virtual machines and impulsive control methods. Analytical and stochastic models, including Markov chains and impulsive differential equations, are used to predict failure onset and optimise rejuvenation timing. More recently, machine-learning methods have been employed to forecast aging indicators, enabling adaptive and predictive rejuvenation schedules. The trade-offs between downtime, resource overhead and cost remain central to policy design, and research continues to explore hybrid approaches that balance reactive repair with proactive maintenance. Applications span cloud computing, cyber-physical energy systems, mobile platforms and critical industrial controls, reflecting the global significance of ensuring long-term software reliability and security.
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Software Aging and Rejuvenation Strategies in Computing Systems publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in software aging and rejuvenation strategies in computing systems across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Software aging: gradual degradation of system performance due to resource exhaustion, cumulative errors and memory leaks during prolonged execution.
Software rejuvenation: proactive intervention that restores a system to a clean state, typically through restart, checkpointing or state cleansing to prevent failures.
Availability: the proportion of time that a system remains operational and capable of performing its functions.
Corrective maintenance: reactive process of repair or update applied after fault detection to restore system performance, often balancing cost and downtime.
Aperiodic impulse: discrete, non-regularly timed rejuvenation actions modelled as impulses to enhance system availability with flexible scheduling.
References
- A Model for Availability and Security Risk Evaluation for Systems With VMM Rejuvenation Enabled by VM Migration Scheduling. IEEE Access (2019).
- Availability Analysis of Software Systems with Rejuvenation and Checkpointing. Mathematics (2021).
- Dynamic Analysis of Software Systems with Aperiodic Impulse Rejuvenation. Mathematics (2022).
- Optimal Corrective Maintenance Policies via an Availability-Cost Hybrid Factor for Software Aging Systems. Mathematics (2024).
- A Comprehensive Model of Android Software Aging and Rejuvenation Considering Battery Saving. Electronics (2023).
- hLSTM-Aging: A Hybrid LSTM Model for Software Aging Forecast. Applied Sciences (2022).
- Multi-State Reliability Assessment Model of Base-Load Cyber-Physical Energy Systems (CPES) during Flexible Operation Considering the Aging of Cyber Components. Energies (2021).
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