If a site claims 99.9% Uptime, what does that mean and how can it be guaranteed?

I mean, you take a host that's been around for 3 years, that means they've only been down for a total of 26 hours? Is that how the percentage is determined? Or is this just marketing ?

Thanks

Sadly, in my experience I've found it to be marketing hype. Of the six hosts that I've used over the past five years (some at the same time, for different sites) I've found that all of them, even those that offer 99.9% uptime, are down at one time or another. That's just the fact of life.

Of course many hosts could minimize their downtime and don't.

I was with one host (who'll go nameless because I think they post here often) and during my second month with them my site was down more than it was up. It stayed spotty even after they "fixed" the problem and I had to leave.

Has anyone been with a host who they've never seen go down?

-- Jough

IMHO it's mostly marketing. It's doubtlful that any server truly experiences less than 0.1% downtime over an extended period of time. But in order for you to take advantage of any guarantee, you'd have to constantly monitor your site. They certainly won't send you an e-mail to let you know that you're getting a refund because the server was down for an hour in the middle of the night.

I saw a site (whom I won't name) offering a 100% uptime guarantee. Their policy went on to say, "We will refund 50% of your monthly fee if our server is down for any period of 20 minutes or more." So in other words, the server can go down for several minutes every hour, but as long as it's not down for 20 continuous minutes I'm not entitled to anything. That's a 100% guarantee???

Sites that say they never go down are most likely new or are just as said earlier printing hype, The hosting service I have has had in my stay with them, alomst three months, a total of 8 minutes of down time, what percent is that I don't know but it is as sure as the sun rising that all hosting services will have down time.

Try e-mailing the host who has the 99.9% guarantee about what he means. Most put this in the AUP, TOS, Agreements, Policies, etc..

Some do offer a credit, but you need to read the fine print for the exceptions.

Yeah, I figured it was marketing.

I couldn't understand how any site could promise such a thing, but two lowpriced hosts that I'm looking at *both* say 99.9% uptime.

Anybody have any experience with www.valuablehost.com or www.noxraq.com?


Thanks :)

I can't say they never went down, but when my sites at Hurricane Electric went down -- it was always like a "No Way -- it's NEVER down!" I went several months without any noticable downtime -- and even what I call "downtime" was really "painfully slow" time more often than not. I still have a few sites with them. You don't get many flashy perks -- and they SLAM you if you go over your limits, but they've been incredibly reliable for me.

Support was very robotic and impersonal ... but honestly -- I've only had to contact them once.

Originally posted by FrankieG
If a site claims 99.9% Uptime, what does that mean and how can it be guaranteed?
Thanks

99.9% means that your site can be down only 8.76 hours / year.
It is quite difficult to achieve this. But there are businesses where is needed 99.99%

Services like hotmail.com needs a 100% uptime or MANY customers will be mad...

But what about defence systems?

Can I place my dedicated servers at the pentagon or NASA please? I don't think I can afford it ;)

Originally posted by Domenico
Services like hotmail.com needs a 100% uptime or MANY customers will be mad...

Strictly saying, 100% is impossible value, it may be possible 99.9999% (can add few 9s after . :) )

Hi,

You may of forgotten something here, some hosts offer 99.9% uptime by monthly basis or by yearly basis.

Kindest Regards,
ValuableHost

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away I remember hosts offering 99.x% uptime and if lower, they would compensate you for it.

Do host still do this or is it just a sells BS?

does that mean 99.9% of the time they are online they are working?

or 99.9% of the time that they are in existance?

Even if they manage to keep their servers up for 99.9% of the time (which the won't), there could be other problems with the uplink provider or whatever which make your website unavailable.

I wouldn't bother choosing a host with that guarantee. It's just marketing crap. Go for one with a good rep instead. I?'d recommend valueweb or wizardshosting.

hey, whattya know! both valueweb and wizardshosting offer 99.9% uptime gurantee!

I've never had personal experience with valueweb; however, I am currently hosted with wizardshosting and experienced only minor downtime (less then 40minutes total last month)... but if you truly calculate the number of minutes (or if you want, the number of seconds) that there are in a month and the number of minutes that my site experienced downtime, i think they fulfilled their 99.9% uptime gurantee within the last month...

also i think the 99.9% uptime gurantee is PER month... but i think the % should be similar every month unless they experience severe outage within a single month...

g'luck

bah uptime guarentees don't mean anything unless they really say that if you prove it to them they will refund your money or something...but if they just say 99.99% uptime guarentee without any real guarentee, it doesn't mean a thing

Originally posted by creepcolony
bah uptime guarentees don't mean anything unless they really say that if you prove it to them they will refund your money or something...but if they just say 99.99% uptime guarentee without any real guarentee, it doesn't mean a thing

hehe very true... so whenever a host doesn't meet their monthly uptime gurantee requirement... make sure you ask for the refund or free month or whatever! ;)

I wouldn't bother choosing a host with that guarantee. It's just marketing crap. Go for one with a good rep instead. I?'d recommend valueweb or wizardshosting.

It is marketing crap for crap host. Most web host here will honor it if asked to. If you are a customer of a web host and they have downtime beyond the guarantee, ask for a refund. If they refuse, move host immediately. Some things can not be guaranteed, like hacks, cracks, people running bad cgi's, etc.. However things like hardware failures and network issues can be (it is called redundancy - almost every host advertises this buzzword). If a web host is a reseller with a 99.9% uptime guarantee and they do not meet this guarantee due to their wholesalers network, they should still have to honor this *guarantee*. They are the ones who chose that provider. Not you the customer. You trusted them to go with a solid provider. It someone puts 99.9% uptime guarantees on their site they should be forced to honor it. Just like those who put "unlimited" on their sites.

Just my 2.

Alright, I understand that there are some webhosts that use this as a "marketing ploy" and hope you just don't notice if they go down. However, there are some reputable hosts that DO actually alert their customers when their site goes down. And just to clear something up, 99.9% uptime gives your host a lot of freedom here is why:

99.9%: allows 43.2 minutes of downtime per month, which, as long as the noc is solid, is a lot of headroom, unless they get hacked.

99.99%:(this bothers me) allows for 4.32 minutes of downtime per month, which is ALMOST impossible to achieve especially if you do not own your own NOC

99.999%: (my favorite), allows for 25.92 SECONDS of dowtime per month...Yeah,....right.

If you want to make sure your host isn't ripping you off on downtime, download "Ping Plotter"

Regards.

The host I'm currently with offers either 99% or 99.9% uptime, depending on which page on the website you look at.

They also only offer this on the network, and only for something that is not the fault of their hosting company (they resell VDI space) or the upstream service providers.

I asked what that really covers and never received a satisfactory answer. What exactly is their network ? Everything between their switch and their servers in the same rack?

All hype. :rolleyes:

There *are* a few companies out there that *will* guarantee you 100% uptime.. and *will* refund your money if your site goes down. You just usually have to shell out more for that kind of service.

Adam

Just as another data point, here are some email conversations I had with my provider.

me: Hey, I can't get to my server. The network appears to be down.

provider: It's a VDI problem.

me: OK. I'd like to get credit on my account based on the 99.9% uptime guarantee.

provider: Sorry, read the TOS again. This is not our fault, it's upstream of us and so is not covered by our guarantee.

And a few weeks later, after my server was down all weekend in a no-coverage window of their 7x24 support model...
me: Hey. My server is still down, and it's been 26 hours. I would like to get credit on my account based on the 99.9% uptime guarantee.

provider: Sorry. That only covers network issues. This is a server issue. Please read the TOS.

And finally the follow up:

me: So if you don't cover network outages at VDI, and you don't cover server outages, just exactly what do you cover in your 99.9% uptime guarantee?

provider: You obviously have not read our TOS. Please read it again to completely understand our 99% uptime guarantee.

me: Can you tell me when you have paid a claim against the uptime guarantee? Exactly what situations are covered?

provider: Sir. Please read the TOS again. We cannot provide specific details for any other customer issues we may have had in the past.


Fun. :rolleyes:

thewitt, why are you still with that host? Downed servers (as long as they were not cracked or brought down by something not in their control like bad cgi scripts) and VDI network issues should be covered by them. They chose their provider.

If you build a house and a sub contractor puts in bad granite for example, the builder is at fault because they chose that sub contractor. The same should be true for a reseller choosing a wholesaler. Many resellers find the cheapest wholesaler they can find and don't look to network uptimes.

Change web host to someone who will honor guarantees and not make them obsolete by hidden clauses in their Terms. There are many good host here that will refund if they do not meet their uptime guarantee.

Originally posted by thewitt
Just as another data point, here are some email conversations I had with my provider.

Yikes!
So, who would that provider be?

Originally posted by en
I wouldn't bother choosing a host with that guarantee. It's just marketing crap

Honestly, I'm not running any business or anything, but just looking for some inexpensive webspace that will cover my needs (cheap hosting for 4 difft domains) So a 99.9% uptime guarantee is not a deciding factor for me

www.Valuablehost.com and www.noxraq.com both provide almost exactly what I'm looking for. I've searched this site for feedback on noxraq.com but I can't find much information at all.

Actually, I don't understand the search function here. When I type in *noxraq* I get zero results. But I can type in just noxraq and get a couple or type in noxraq.com and get a couple more. The search page itself says that using wildcards * should give me everything that contains that string... but I get nothing...

Oh well :)

Originally posted by A.Eisner
There *are* a few companies out there that *will* guarantee you 100% uptime.. and *will* refund your money if your site goes down. You just usually have to shell out more for that kind of service.

Companies like Conxion. They are known as the category leading in HA hosting, last year they rolled out FailSafe hosting that provides an automatic 100% refund of monthly fees if there is more than 26 seconds of cumulative downtime in a month...No one else in HA is that far along in their SLA's.

They are also known as the most expensive host in the industry, word on the street is their hosting fees are in the neighborhood of a $20,000/month (which seems ugly, but Navisite charges 8K/month and they aren't HA)...But then the organizations who use those hosting facilities are companies like Microsoft, who can afford to pay what ever it takes to ensure that their download sites are never down.

Hi,

99.9% no downtime is definetly possible! nearly the end of the month and no downtime at all! But it makes me wonder about the 99.999% seen alot of those lol, but please do not say it is impossible, unless of, natural disasters etc... Also most hosts do give some kind of reward in exchange if there is any downtime.

Kindest Regards,
ValuableHost

Yeah, it's my understanding that 100% guarantees are more expensive.. hence most of the companies are know making use of it are biiig companies. :)

Adam

me: So if you don't cover network outages at VDI, and you don't cover server outages, just exactly what do you cover in your 99.9% uptime guarantee?

provider: You obviously have not read our TOS. Please read it again to completely understand our 99% uptime guarantee.
Unless there were some compelling overriding reason not to, I'd dump a host that said that in a second. Ask a direct question, you deserve a direct answer. Ask for clarification about their terms, you deserve a clarification -- not "the answer's in there somewhere in the fine print, try again and maybe you'll find it!"

Always read the fine print.

We were playing a game of 'analyze the uptime guarantee' over on WHD recently and unless you get out the calculator and pick through the terms and exclusions for that guarantee, you may find out that you are getting less than you bargained for.

If a host boasts about their uptime, they should be able to demonstrate it by posting real-time stats on thier site for all to see.

We don't boast because we are "realists". But at the same time, we're not ashamed of our uptime stats which are located from the site.

If I were looking for hosting, I'd want proof of:

uptime;
support leadtime;
pricing structure (not to change).

Originally posted by inet7
If a host boasts about their uptime, they should be able to demonstrate it by posting real-time stats on thier site for all to see.

agreed, but how can you even be sure that they are the real mccoy, and not some script or java applet that presents fake data and updates the time...

Unless you watch it regularly, have your site monitored by a third party that pings at the same rate, and compare the two.

for you can bet on it that if live uptime stats become the latest thing for web hosts, then those who can will do, and those who can't will cheat.

And third party monitoring companies will flourish.

Yeap. We're back to the "trust what the host says" thing. Something we all know could go on for hours.

IF, I was looking for hosting....and hosted my site elsewhere, I would certainly use a 3rd party service to monitor my website/server. Netmechanic (http://www.netmechanic.com/monitor.htm) seems to be a reasonable service for end users.

Pegasus' uptime guarentee says that the refund policy doesn't apply to "provider problems". I emailed them asking what exactly does that mean. Here's their reply:

"Provider problems mean if the company which we use for bandwith and internet service has a network problem or some kind of technical difficulty. It is beyond our control."

I thought to myself why isnt' their network problem isn't their problem. Hell, they're the ones who chose their network providers. However, it took them over 20 hours to respond to my request so I didn't bother. Pegasus seems as lame as many of the webhosting companies I've encountered lately.