Hi all -

Found my site downed periodically. I contacted the host about the issue, and they blamed it on my internet provider.

Someone on another site mention that for non-dedicated hosting, periodic downtime is to be expected.

My question is, what sort of downtime frequency and length should be considered as acceptable for non-dedicated hosting?

Simply info gathering here - stumbled in - but there appears to be a lot of people in the know.

Brian

chroniclesofempire.com

Whenever you think your site is down, get a friend to check it out who is on a different Internet provider to you. You shouldn't experience any more than 40 minutes of downtime per month maximum... I would say that is very realistic. It's true that a for non-dedicated hosting that it'll go down more often than dedicated since there's a lot more sites hosted on the same server. But the downtime still has to be realistic and not go down say 5 or 10 minutes per day.

If you are getting periodic downtime, you should really switch to another web hosting.

Alan

Personally, I don't like anymore than about 15 minutes a month. 30 mintues as an *absolute* maximum.

Well, technically downtime is not something which is acceptable but like anything in life, we would probably tolerate a certain level of downtime. Check your Web host guaranteed up-time level. If they claim to be 99.9% , that would give it a downtime allowance of 43 minutes.

There are probably many reasons for downtime on a shared environment. Apart from the obvious, connection or harddisk issues, your 'neighbour' sites on the host which be consuming a little more resources than what is estimated. Because on the shared environment, they usually pack in quite a number of sites and one or a combination of those could bring the server to its knees. Of course, other attack such as DOS attack or faulty router or server components could cos it to go down too.

On a dedicated server, you are in control of the sites on the server and if it is not for resale, you would probably be hosting substantially less sites on the server and that you are in control of what is loaded or running. This would ensure a better up time. Of course, if there is a network problem or harddisk problem, it can still go down or when software is mis-configured.

I would think that if you experience short irregular downtime with a quick resolution would be good.

Originally posted by joshp
Personally, I don't like anymore than about 15 minutes a month. 30 mintues as an *absolute* maximum. I certainly agree. Even though 100% server and network uptime is much better and is certainly achievable for a few months. 99.9% uptime is probably the average for a server though, which would include rebooting of the server or restarting the httpd processes for example.

Alan

i got 99.9 last month from just restarting httpd

Just out of curiosity who is your isp ?
ntl in uk have been having some dns problems,i had a few days where my customers could not access their site through ntl but when they tried with another isp they worked fine.I have also had problems with subdomains sometimes not working through ntl dial ups.
They seem to have sorted it now .
As for downtime i would say 30 mins a month downtime is acceptable.and 50 minutes ok if justified by updates/patches etc
we have had 49 minutes downtime over the last 4 months

i use www.dialtone.com, their network seems to be very rock solid

Downtime.. Well, I wouldn't want much over 45 a month. And the thing that ticks me off with some hosts, is that they guarantee 99.9% uptime, but I found my site going down every day. Short periods of time I mind you, but it's definitely something I could have lived without.

John

I agree with joshp; 15 min a month is acceptable; but 30 min. max.

Best: None. I aim to that.
Max: 30 Minute.
Once in a while Disaster: 45-59 Minutes.

You should have zero downtime with shared or dedicated hosting unless it's for upgrades or maintenance. Period.

Once in a while Disaster: 45-59 Minutes

How many disasters only take 45 minutes to resolve?

Hard drive failure then you can expect 5 hours down time.

Way way back in the day,
I was on a shared virtual host which said in their TOS that every sunday between 4-6 am their servers would be down for maintenence. Of course the servers rarely actually went down for this period, but they put that in their TOS to give themselves some headroom. Keep in mind that 3 days downtime per year comes out to 99% uptime over 365 days. With shared virtual accounts SOME downtime is expected for software and hardware upgrades. Continuous downtime over long periods of time is not acceptible, no matter what the cause.

A few weeks ago AlwaysWebHosting moved all the sites on about 5 servers to a new server farm. They did this with no prior warning. My site must have been down for 3 days, msotly because of DNS. Then when it was up their new server and switches were given all sorts of error resulting in an unuseable site. Even though they have 99.9% uptime plastered on their site all they would do is give a refund for that month if I decided to leave. I felt shafted.

Originally posted by I, Brian
My question is, what sort of downtime frequency and length should be considered as acceptable for non-dedicated hosting?

Brian,

What everybody is doing in this thread is posting what THEY find acceptable. The question (your question) is what YOU find acceptable.

And only you can answer that.

Some customers email me when the server is unreachable for 40 seconds (it's like they're watching it 24/7 - maybe I should pay them to page me :D )

Others endure a week of downtime before they send me a polite email asking me to fix it if I have time. (yes, happened. They did something with their dns)

If you are unhappy with the average downtime then you should switch hosts. If you can live with it even though others concider it unacceptable then you don't have to switch hosts.

Rather vague isn't it? I'm counting on the fact that with 20.000 members there'll be at least one who understands what I mean :cartman:

Originally posted by SplashHost.com

How many disasters only take 45 minutes to resolve?

Hard drive failure then you can expect 5 hours down time.

True it depends. That is why good planning is needed.

For the exmaple you gave, hard drive failure, a backup hardrive has all of the data (backed up). So for every 80 GB HD, there is another 80 GB spare drive. Costly yes, but it worth it.

Originally posted by I, Brian
Hi all -
Found my site downed periodically. I contacted the host about the issue, and they blamed it on my internet provider.
Someone on another site mention that for non-dedicated hosting, periodic downtime is to be expected.
My question is, what sort of downtime frequency and length should be considered as acceptable for non-dedicated hosting?
Simply info gathering here - stumbled in - but there appears to be a lot of people in the know.

Brian
chroniclesofempire.com

Next time you get that line....try this link http://www.traceroute.org/ It is real useful in checking out route problems. Try from different points of the world to your site.

This is a good one:
http://traceroute.dsvr.co.uk/cgi-bin/trace.pl?t=chroniclesofempire.com

Thanks folks - it's simply because I came to look for hosting about 18 months ago without a clue about anything. I blundered into forums and asked for referrals.

I'm always learning. Can now compose some HTML, mess with Perl, and a few other neat things. But always learning.

Didn't know about downtime being an expected hazard, so that's why I inquired here as soon as I found out.

You're a great resource, folks - hope I can contribute where I can.

And, yes - I'll be switching hosts. Already know where I'm looking, thanks to WHT.

Brian

I find downtime as unacceptable and frustrating as the next guy, however I think a considered approach and an understanding of the particular situation is always needed.

There is an understandable opinion amongst some customers that if their web site is down then their web host is firstly responsible and secondly is inept or has been negligent in some manner. This of course is not always the case.

Overwhelmingly we find customer reports of 'my web site is down' are not due to either server or network problems and reasons range from a problem with their ISP to domains having expired.

I think if web hosts educated customers in the various reasons for any downtime then a certain understanding would spread, I'm not saying customers should stop reporting downtime, or just accept it in silence, but report it and hopefully receive an educated and infomative response from their web host.

A customer can always combat network downtime by choosing a host with solid network connections and good redundancy. However even the best host cannot guarantee against server or customer caused downtime. As mentioned earlier a hardware failure can cause disruption.

A customer cannot however choose a host where server downtime is nil. A web host just needs a customer with a runaway script or poorly written database connection to cause havoc on the server. Yes it can be found and dealt with but it still has caused downtime.

As for changing host, well that depends on a lot of things, especially how the host deals with downtime, but how many people here pay less per month for their dial-up than hosting and do you change your dial-up eveytime it goes down?

Oh, downtime I can accept - especially when explained.

The host has let down in far more important areas, though. That's on another thread.

I offer my own web hosting and dont have to worry about my web provider anymore, however when i "was" renting from someone else i hated downtime.

I would say 15 min max for a downtime at one time.

No more then once every 3-4 weeks.

Try to find a host that has a 15 min downtime in no more then 2 months and you will be fine.