Reliability and Sensitivity Analyses of an Unreliable Retrial Machine Repair System with Warm Standby Switching Failure

In this study, an unreliable machine repair system with warm standby switching failure and retrial behavior is examined. An application of the Ceph storage cluster system is described to illustrate the applicability of the proposed model and establish its results. To analyze the reliability of the application system, two-state-transition rate diagrams and their associated differential-difference equations are provided. Laplace transforms and the matrix-analytical method are employed to obtain the steady-state probabilities. Explicit expressions for the reliability function, mean time to failure, and steady-state availability of the examined system are then derived. With these system performance measures, we perform a sensitivity analysis of the system parameters to identify critical variables. Furthermore, the numerical results for various parameter settings are tabulated and presented graphically. Finally, managerial insights and constructive results are provided as a guide for managers in determining an effective strategy for performance enhancement.