Is there a huge difference between 99.9% uptime to 99.5% uptime to 98% uptime? Is there a way to translate this to how many times a site can go down in a month? If there is a link, someone please post the link for me to read.

Thanks.
ochiba

let's say (rough calculation)... you have 30 days/mo ...
That's about 720 hours/mo ...

1% of this is 7.2 hours or 7 hours 12 minutes

So 98% uptime should allow 2x1% downtime or (at least) 14 hours 24 minutes of downtime/month

99.5% uptime should allow 0.5x1% downtime or (at least) 3 hours 36 minutes of downtime/month

99.9% uptime should allow 0.1x1% downtime or (at least) 43 minutes 24 seconds of downtime/month

and so on ...

cheers,
:beer:

Just a couple of related points. Most people think that 99.x% is an uptime guarantee, it isn't. It is (like every other guarantee), a monetary guarantee. If it isn't up, you get credit back on your bill. A life-time guarantee on a hammer isn't saying the hammer will never break, it is saying that if it *does* we'll replace it at no charge.

Second point, is that you should read the TOS on how this is calculated, don't just look at the front page of the site and see 99.9%. The TOS should tell you the exact terms of this guarantee. Sometimes this is limited by natural disaster, etc. (the usual things), but also by upstream provider, etc., and other things which are directly related to your provider. In other words, if they have servers at verio (just an example) they are saying that if verio's network goes down or has a problem, this is not included in the 99.9%.

Other limitations I've seen include calculations of the uptime being determined *network-wide* and other odd things that I personally do not have any relation to whether your site is up. In other words, the 99.9% is calculated overall, not just for you and your server.

Point is, you need to look past the first page and understand the guarantee as it is presented in the TOS, not according to what you think it is. What you think it should be isn't going to matter when you ask for credit for the month. They aren't going to accept your netwhistle reports as 'evidence of downtime'.

This is a feature that you may also want to consider about uptime and guarantees. Do you have to notify them to receive the credit?,
"You do not need to notify us to receive the credit. You do not need to prove to us it was down. Unlike 99.5% of the other hosts out there we honor our promise to you with pride. We will automatically, without question, apply the uptime credit when our servers have not successfully delivered your web site for at least 99.5% of the month. We're also proud to mention that the majority of our servers currently average 99.9% to 100% uptime each month!"
This is good:D

Originally posted by Daytripper
This is a feature that you may also want to consider about uptime and guarantees. Do you have to notify them to receive the credit?,


I might be doing something stupid :) But we alert our customers on any downtime (or any service disruptions) via our forum. But we still ask them to request for the service credit though ... :)

cheers,
:beer:

I don't think a customer should expect to be refunded for downtime resulting from DOS attacks, natural disasters, or server hardware failure.

They're not paying a host for hardware that never experiences problems, to prevent natural disasters, or to police the Internet. They're outsourcing their hosting to you for your redundant network/power and ability to maintain a facility, network, and server 24/7 for less than they could, and to industry standard.

The only thing that should be guaranteed is that your server will be connected to the Internet when there is no DOS attack, there is no natural disaster, and the server is not experiencing hardware problems. And if there is a DOS attack, a natural disaster, or server hardware problems, you should be guaranteed that the problems will be resolved to industry standards.

If you want guarantees for DOS attacks, natural disasters, and server hardware failure, you should be willing to pay for high availibility features that would make it possible.

IMHO.