Abstract: A system and method for performing a failure analysis on a computing system uses a Bayesian network that is generated from a correlation directed acyclic graph (CDAG) of nodes that represent entities in the computing system with edge weights for edges between the nodes. The CDAG is generated using log entries of the computing system with reference to a dictionary file, which specifies entity types, dependency types of the entity types, expressions that return values representing prior probabilities of failure for the dependency types, and the edge weights for the dependency types. The Bayesian network generated from the CDAG includes conditional probabilities for edges of the Bayesian network based on the edge weights of the CDAG. The Bayesian network is used to compute posterior probabilities of possible causes of a new failure event in the computing system and output at least one probable cause with an associated posterior probability for the new failure event.