100% uptime - is that possible?

[HWH Andrew]

It honestly depends on how they advertise it and the fine details.

It could be a visual 100% uptime. Which therefor you would never notice your site being offline.

Or, it could be a physical 100% uptime. Which means the server never went down. This is the one that is possible for an amount of time, but would deem to drop a .01% sooner or later. But it is possible to have this for a good year or three.

When one has redundant arrays of hardware and wires, and can replace these in real-time without causing downtime, that will be when 100% can be achieved.

 

[b2netsolutions]

100% uptime is a reality and if the company wants to be ahead of many other ones, they achieve that using stable network providers and quality technicians.

 

[Delgado2009]

b2net, and don't forget about data centers.

 

[ldcdc]

100% uptime is a reality and if the company wants to be ahead of many other ones, they achieve that using stable network providers and quality technicians.

There's no network that has been around for a decent amount of time, that hasn't experienced at least a partial downtime. 100% uptime is perfection, and there's no such thing in the technical world. It is not 100% certain that the Earth itself will be here a year from now.

 

[handsonhosting]

100% uptime is a reality and if the company wants to be ahead of many other ones, they achieve that using stable network providers and quality technicians.

Here's a simple scenario:

I setup a hosting account with you - you guarantee the uptime.
I then setup a second account (under a different name), and use that account to achive a dDOS attack. While I'm at it, I may as well just ROOT the system too and make it so that you need to reformat the machine and/or move users to an alternate machine.

So, while the fault was not YOURS, you failed to provide 100% uptime to customer #1.

If you're sure you can achive that 100% uptime for the next 6 months, feel free to put up a $10,000 guarantee, and I'm sure you'll have people provide an account number you can send the wire transfer shortly there after.

100% uptime is not something ANYONE offers. There are 100% network uptime guarantees, but even then, companies that have been around for many years are aware of past experiences with other places. Parts of The Planet were shut down for a 72 hour period back in 2008 due to a fire, and while they had the necessary power generators etc on site, the fire department prevented them from starting operation. There's places in Chicago that have been affected by as little as a Truck crashing through a building etc.

Now those places offered 100% network uptime, and they refunded people that met the SLA's - but if you wish to claim 100% uptime and offer a guarantee that's substantial, I"m sure you'll have a few takers to put you to the test

** the above statements are not a threat to you, your company or your network. These are scenario situations and should be treated as such.

 

[gen.anovlis28]

They want 100% uptime with off-site failover on a web application. From our web application's viewpoint, this isn't an issue. It was designed to be able to scale out across multiple database servers, etc.

However, from a networking issue I just can't seem to figure out how to make it work.

 

[Crook-sam]

I would suggest webmasters to look for a minimum uptime of 99%. In fact, even 99% is actually too low - it really should be 99.5% or higher. The host should provide some sort of refund (eg prorated refund or discount) if it falls below that figure.

 

[romes]

The way I did it was I advertised 100% uptime because it was true. I believe for a whole year none of my servers went down or offline for whatever reason. But, in my TOS I stated even though I say 100% uptime I could only guarantee 98%, but after my first year I was at 99%. I think I only hit 98% once in my 4 years of being a host.

My point being some people can advertise 100% uptime and be truthful about that but to guarantee it is just not possible. Something is gonna happen sooner or later that will result in that 100% going away. Whether it be maintenance, crash, etc. you will lose it. Offering it and being honest, Yes. Offering it and guaranteeing it, No. Just no way to guarantee something like that.

 

[Posilan]

The way I did it was I advertised 100% uptime because it was true. I believe for a whole year none of my servers went down or offline for whatever reason. But, in my TOS I stated even though I say 100% uptime I could only guarantee 98%

There is a world of difference in stating what has happened (ie stating you have had 100% uptime in the past) and quoting uptime for an SLA.

Incidental, how can you guarantee 98% uptime (even though 98% would be poor allowing for over a week of downtime per year)?

Our SLA states out what a client can expect if we fall below the uptime percentage - we cannot guarantee it will achieve that and I'm not sure any hosting company that could absolutely guarantee 100% (there's that number again!) that they could.

Steve

 

[romes]

Well, you see once I fell below 100% uptime I stoped advertising that. My advertising included 99% from then on. Also, it is hard to get 98% uptime, majority of hosts stay within 99% but there will be times when stuff happens that is out of your control.

 

[othellotech]

Wouldn't cloud hosting guarantee 100% uptime, if connected to multiple network providers?

No, and with most "clouds" just being cheap VPS with no real "separation" between users, your uptime can be directly affected by factors way outside your control.

100% uptime is possible assuming no other requirements to reboot/restart on dedicated hardware - we had a cobalt raq acting as 2ndary DNS which was up for over 5 years until we decomissioned it

 

[CaptureHost]

It's debated - I say not possible, look at Amazon when Minecraft 1.0 was released?

 

[ldcdc]

100% uptime is possible assuming no other requirements to reboot/restart on dedicated hardware - we had a cobalt raq acting as 2ndary DNS which was up for over 5 years until we decomissioned it

Even then, uptime depends on 100% availability of energy, 100% network uptime, neither of which is actually 100% stable. One natural disaster is all it takes.

 

[VLStream]

It depends on how much time its based on. The way i see it, during the time i've been typing this my websites achieved 100% uptime.

 

[Aim2Colo]

It depends on how much time its based on. The way i see it, during the time i've been typing this my websites achieved 100% uptime.

That doesn't mean others are able to connect to it. The network could be up but what happens if the other person ISP providers router can't find a path to the host of the website. Then you got routing issues and the client/viewer thinks the sites down. Tons of things play a role in this subject. Depends on the way you look at it and what your definition is of 100% uptime.

 

[easyhostmedia]

what happens if the other person ISP providers router can't find a path to the host of the website. Then you got routing issues and the client/viewer thinks the sites down.

this scenario is the fault of the ISP as their router failed, but your site/server was up, so no downtime was recorded.

a good client would not argue the point if you can provide evidence the server was up as if they had router issues then this would 100% effect them viewing other sites and may even prevent them from connecting to the internet.

 

[Artashes]

That doesn't mean others are able to connect to it. The network could be up but what happens if the other person ISP providers router can't find a path to the host of the website. Then you got routing issues and the client/viewer thinks the sites down. Tons of things play a role in this subject. Depends on the way you look at it and what your definition is of 100% uptime.

Happened to me at least a few times years ago when my local ISP has problems reaching the site, but that doesn't mean the server the website is on was down. However, I wouldn't take this against the web host provider as the responsibility clearly lies somewhere locally.

 

[webling]

With the data center I use from what I understand, 100% uptime is achieved because of several factors. Firstly, these data centers have backup generators that will run the entire facility in the event of power failure. They use redundant servers that run back to back, each retaining a copy of your site and running dual DNS. It's more complicated than that, but that's the short description. 100% uptime has no relevance to network connectivity or availability, it's dependent on your site simply being up 100% of the time.

 

[easyhostmedia]

i had to laugh at a host-tracker report i received which stated my server was down 12 day(s) 6 hour(s) (see below) which i told them if this was true i would have noticed and i dare say i would have had some angry clients, so this is a false positive, but their reply was as more than 1 of their stations reported this then they were right and the server was down

[Delta Server] **.**.**.** now OK.

Current time 01/03/2012 04:43:41 PM

Operation restored at 01/03/2012 04:43:31 PM

London, United Kingdom - Ok
Istanbul, Turkey - Ok
Amsterdam, Netherlands - Ok
Noida, India - MostPingFailed (1)
San Jose, CA, USA - MostPingFailed (1)
Dallas, TX, USA - MostPingFailed (1)

Url was down as a result of:

MostPingFailed

First error was detected at 18/02/2012 10:26:23 AM

Last error was detected at 01/03/2012 04:43:31 PM

Downtime total 12 day(s) 6 hour(s).

Check failures total: 4822.

 

[TransIP VPS]

I wonder if it's possible to provide 100% uptime, I mean server uptime?

I think there have been some providers who have had 100% uptime. It is by no means impossible but all key equipment must be in place and I think luck is a big factor. Like everybody mentioned above eventually it is all a time issue. Given enough time every provider will experience down time at some point. But 100% up time in a year I think is possible.