Oops! Coping with human error in IT systems

Human operator error is one of the most insidious sources of failure and data loss in today's IT environments. Therefore, it is critical that the designers, architects, implementers and operators of today's IT infrastructures to be aware of the human error problem and build in mechanisms for tolerating and coping with the errors that will inevitably occur. There are several possible approaches for coping with human error, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The approaches, which can be divided into four general categories, are discussed: 1. error prevention, 2. spatial replication, 3. temporal replication, and 4. temporal replication with reexecution.