Availability Modeling for Blockchain Provisioning in Private Clouds

Blockchain technology has emerged, and many previous studies have assessed its performance issues. However, less attention has been paid to the dependability attributes, which have been a critical topic in service provisioning, considering public or private infrastructures. This paper introduces analytical models to assess the availability of private blockchain infrastructure for Hyperledger Fabric-based applications. Furthermore, a case study will be presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed model, which may assist stakeholders in deciding whether to migrate from old to new technology. Some of the obtained results indicate that, unlike most conventional systems, general availability may decrease as new nodes are added to the environment. This phenomenon occurs due to the adopted endorsement policy, which determines the proportion of required nodes to sign the authenticity of a transaction.