Patent ID: 7610173

Claim:
A method for diagnosing a failure in a computer system, comprising: testing the computer system using a sequence of tests, wherein a given test includes a given load associated with a pre-determined failure mechanism for a given failure condition; obtaining results during the given test, wherein the results include telemetry signals that are monitored within the computer system; and if the results indicate the given failure condition, ceasing the testing and indicating that the computer system has the given failure condition, and otherwise continuing the sequence of tests until the sequence is completed, at which point, if no fault has been detected, indicating that a no-trouble-found (NTF) condition exists; wherein the sequence of tests includes one or more stress tests, and wherein after the one or more stress tests, the method further comprises applying one or more sinusoidal perturbations in computer-load or physical variables to the computer system to obtain a dynamic input-output characterization of the computer system in the frequency domain.