Historically, benchmarking has been used to proceed with the performance testing, whereas only recently the system availability has gained recognition and respect because of high-availability technologies moreover systems are expected to operate continually (24/7). Not only is downtime unacceptable, but its cost can be enormous, as noted in [3], system downtime can exceed $500 0000 per hour, stressing the importance of a highly available infrastruc- ture. Increasingly, individuals and organizations are developing or procuring sophis- ticated computing and communication systems for which the high availabilty is a requisite whether to service a set of cash dispensers, control a satel- lite constellation, an airplane, a nuclear plant, telecom systems, emergency telecommunications or a radiation therapy device, or to maintain the confi- dentiality of a sensitive database. The consequences are serious if even parts of such systems are unavailable when their services are need...