Greetings:

I recently saw a reply to a request for hosting that stated:

"*** VIEW OUR SERVICE ***

...

we have six servers on our network 3 at EV1

...

99.9% Uptime guarantee "

===

What I find curious is that Rackshack.net (Everyone's Internet) does not have an up time guarantee.

How is it possible to offer a guarantee that is backed by what?

Meaning, if the data center has no up time guarantees, how can any hosting provider running servers out of that data center offer any guarantees?

Thank you.

Well, it's easy to talk when no compensation is offered if they don't meet the uptime guarantee (I'm not saying that's the case here).

If there is compensation offered, they decided they trusted enough in RS/EV1's network to offer such terms, and if needed are ready to shell out compensation out of their pocket.

I haven't seen much downtime from RS lately, so if I were on that network I probably wouldn't have any problem doing that.

But then again, I haven't been looking for notices about their uptime, so maybe I missed a few. I don't know.

Anyone can guarantee whatever they want, it's what they deliver that counts!

All a guarantee typically offers is a credit for downtime.

99.9% uptime.... that .1% is a lot of down time (43.2 minutes).

I am sure they are banking EV1 will not be down 43.2 minutes in a month.


Formula:
86,400 seconds per day x 30 days = 2,592,000
2,592,000 x 0.1% = 2,592 seconds of downtime
2,592 / 60 = 43.2 minutes of downtime

uptime guarantees don't mean anything anymore it's just a sales pitch.

if 100 people are on a server and the server goes down for say 1 hour out of those 100 people less than half will probably notice that leaves say 45 out of those 45 people only about 20 or so will start freaking out and out of the 25 left only about 10 people will bother to open a ticket and 8 out of ten will be happy after you infom them that you are working on the problem and the remaining 2 will want some form of credit. These numbers are from my experance with hosting.

so what I'm saying is that you can offer 99.9% uptime and you will only have to honor that to about 5% or less of your customers who bother to ask for it.
There isn't a host on this forum that will email all the customers that were affected and offer them credit, simpily because they arn't stupid enough to do that.

Its just a marketing ploy.

99.9% uptime garantee's should only be taken as something worth having if your colocating... Whereby the ISP offers an uptime garantee with the connection.

Originally posted by Sainthax
uptime guarantees don't mean anything anymore [blah blah blah]
so what I'm saying is that you can offer 99.9% uptime and you will only have to honor that to about 5% or less of your customers who bother to ask for it.
There isn't a host on this forum that will email all the customers that were affected and offer them credit, simpily because they arn't stupid enough to do that. and James[UH] said: Its just a marketing ploy. I challenge that.

Though I've been busy for a month or two I certainly represent a "Host on this forum" that honors the uptime guarantee and we AUTOMATICALLY CREDIT EVERY ACCOUNT that may have been affected by unexpected downtime.

Repeat:

AUTOMATICALLY CREDIT EVERY ACCOUNT

We do not require nor ask the clients to contact us concerning it. The credit just magically shows up on their invoice and that's that.

I only wish all hosts would do the same because then clients would see true SLAs and hosts would FEAR downtime far more than they ever have in the past. Take note, it's just another one of those "little things" that sets some hosts apart from the rest. I doubt we are the only ones who does this..however, I would have to regretfully agree I have yet to find another one that does :(

I think most hosts who offer a garantee, and do refund automatically would need to be a fairly big business. Otherwise if there was a big outage, were 100% of there customer base lost service for say 3 days it could get rather expensive ;)

With many small hosts, offering garantees on there site, and nothing in an SLA will scream marketing ploy :)

Originally posted by James[UH]
... if there was a big outage, were 100% of there customer base lost service for say 3 days it could get rather expensive ;) That's why it's important to offer it. Trust me, the more accountable you hold yourself the better your services will be and most clients notice that.

Honoring a guarantee is proportionate to your size. That's the beauty of it. If you're small you'll owe less than if you are large and either way it hurts which is exactly the point.

Size doesn't matter on this issue. The "fine" fits the "crime".

But the point is many just use it for a martketing ploy, and no itention of honouring the garantee, whether its in the SLA or not.

Never offered an uptime guarantee. Don't plan on offerring one in the future. BTW, we post uptime stats each week. The net is too volatile of a platform to be dishing out gaurantees. Not knocking the hosts who offer them, btw. :)

But IMO, most "99.9% Uptime Guarantees" around the place these days are completely worthless and just sales dribble. :eek3:

True :( As much as I hate to have to agree; the "point" of this thread is quite correct.

It's a shame there isn't more honesty in the area. I'm all for Aussie Bob's feelings on the matter just as much as I am all for accountability. What irritates me is those that "claim one thing and deliver another". As this thread explains, the latter is the most popular :angry:

I'd be more apt to choose a host that says "No, we do not offer a guarantee" than I would a host that claims to but really doesn't.

When considering this myself for my company I decided that since I do not own the data center and have a high enough level of control, I can't offer an uptime guarantee. It is at least my philosophy that an uptime guarantee should be based on the fact that the company is capable of and has a decent history of providing at least that level of service. It should not be used as a ploy and a host should certainly never guarantee something that they can't really deliver.

I commend Deb and the whole FutureQuest team on keeping their word with their guarantee's. If there is any company that we as hosts should look up to, it would be FutureQuest. Not only are the staff and owners honorable and polite, but they know how to run a business the right way, and they treat their customers well. I think if everyone aspired to compete with FutureQuest the industry would be MUCH better off.

<removed> people can offer what they like if they want to fork out money because Ev1 is down for a bit let them do it. If a host is hanging online by a shoe string and as not got much of a income that might be a problem but if the host has 3 servers at Ev1 and can prove he has that would make me think that host has a good bit of business and a good income, the company you are talking about is also a registered firm in Ireland, which would also make me think they dont want to get sued by making false sales "pitchs".

<removed>

Regards

Vline

Originally posted by ServerSonic
When considering this myself for my company I decided that since I do not own the data center and have a high enough level of control, I can't offer an uptime guarantee. It is at least my philosophy that an uptime guarantee should be based on the fact that the company is capable of and has a decent history of providing at least that level of service. It should not be used as a ploy and a host should certainly never guarantee something that they can't really deliver.

I commend Deb and the whole FutureQuest team on keeping their word with their guarantee's. If there is any company that we as hosts should look up to, it would be FutureQuest. Not only are the staff and owners honorable and polite, but they know how to run a business the right way, and they treat their customers well. I think if everyone aspired to compete with FutureQuest the industry would be MUCH better off.
I agree with you 100%. :):agree:

Originally posted by Aussie Bob

I agree with you 100%. :):agree:

Indeed, well said :)

Originally posted by James[UH]
Otherwise if there was a big outage, were 100% of there customer base lost service for say 3 days it could get rather expensive ;)
Why would any isp's servers ever have to be offline for anything even close to three days?

Cu, Moritz

Originally posted by mjehlenz

Why would any isp's servers ever have to be offline for anything even close to three days?

Cu, Moritz


Recall the FDC server issue who where offline for over two weeks. It does happen.

Regards

"dynamicnet you are a bit of a pain in the ass anit ya"

calm it down mate, dynamicnet has a completely valid point - the fact of the matter is ... you probably wont keep this guarantee during ANY month and you are relying on your customers not noticing.

Anyone with dedicates at a DC where there is no guarantee should not really offer one themselves. OK so you might be willing to compensate - but by having a guarantee the customer is tricked into thinking you really do get 99.9%.

Originally posted by UH-Matt
"dynamicnet you are a bit of a pain in the ass anit ya"

calm it down mate, dynamicnet has a completely valid point - the fact of the matter is ... you probably wont keep this guarantee during ANY month and you are relying on your customers not noticing.

Anyone with dedicates at a DC where there is no guarantee should not really offer one themselves. OK so you might be willing to compensate - but by having a guarantee the customer is tricked into thinking you really do get 99.9%.

I personal think its up to the host if they want to supply a guarantee to supply their customers with 99.9% uptime that's up to them they have their own policys and terms of the uptime guarantee. <removed>

Once again if a company want's to offer 99.9% uptime they can, now if people are dealing with companys that are not registered and not paying tax its a higher risk.

Regards

I know a man like your self Matt and unitedhosting.co.uk couldnt offer the same offer of 99.9% since you have changed backbones to you new lower spec line than the one at EV1 since your site first came online back in August. Thats a change of backbone in less than 3 months of your EV1 box.

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?mode_u=off&mode_w=on&site=www.unitedhosting.co.uk&submit=Examine

just noticed that via netcraft.

But that doesnt mean you can say that other people cant offer 99.9% offer to get to the point most of my servers get 100% uptime a month all in the 100 days uptime zone I had to make a reboot there last month on one of my servers but it only took a couple of seconds I get no where near 40 mins downtime a month and never think I will. As I said 99.9% is possible to offer if your host does not honour it dont give them your custom ever again and bring them to court if you can.

Regards

vline,

thats server uptime, not network uptime. ev1 got heavily ddosed on several occasions this month and the cumulative downtime exceeded .1%, perhaps even 1%.

also, please refrain from being rude, its against forum rules - personal attacks on other members using foul language are uncalled for and are extremely unprofessional and out of place.

<<MOD NOTE: It has been removed, user warned>>

LOL Vline, you really dont have a clue.

If you really looked into it you would see we registered as a company back in 1998 and have been providing services ever since.

Just because our domain moves you assume we move backbones.

We have 6 servers online for your information and although some are on EV1, whats the harm in that? Arent you on EV1 yourself?

Matt.

Also why start to try and pick on me/unitedhosting ? Is it because i disagreed with you *shock horror* take the comments and deal with it.. but please stop actually spending time trying to dig dirt on me or the company i represent.. you wont find any.

Originally posted by mjehlenz

Why would any isp's servers ever have to be offline for anything even close to three days?

Cu, Moritz

Was just an example to simulate an expensive outcome.

:D

Greetings Brad:

“I am sure they are banking EV1 will not be down 43.2 minutes in a month.”

We have a server at Rackshack.net, and it is on our enterprise monitoring system (which is in use by all of Verio’s enterprise customers, General Motors, etc.).

From April 21, 2002 through yesterday, we have seen 56.8524 hours of down time.

Greetings SaintHax:

“So what I'm saying is that you can offer 99.9% uptime and you will only have to honor that to about 5% or less of your customers who bother to ask for it.

There isn't a host on this forum that will email all the customers that were affected and offer them credit, simply because they aren’t stupid enough to do that.”

Actually, one of our employees – Jake – has an internal title of “customer advocate.” He actually goes through support reports, quota reports, data traffic reports, monitoring reports and will often suggest contacting clients whose sites have been down (with or without their knowledge) to offer them credits per the performance guarantee.

Clients are often shocked that we are honest without having them to “keep us honest.”

Greetings Deb:

“Only wish all hosts would do the same because then clients would see true SLAs and hosts would FEAR downtime far more than they ever have in the past.”

Agreed! Good job on the automatic credits for downtime!

“It's a shame there isn't more honesty in the area.”

Agreed.

I see posts for uptime guarantees when their data center does not provide any guarantee on hardware repair and replacement or up time.

I just don’t get the lack of honesty and integrity.

Greetings James:

“I think most hosts who offer a guarantee, and do refund automatically would need to be a fairly big business. Otherwise if there was a big outage, were 100% of there customer base lost service for say 3 days it could get rather expensive”

Actually, if you plan your infrastructure correctly (which also means not have your own servers at a place where there are no guarantees), then the chance of long term down time is minimal.

Our parent company has been in business since June 1995, hosting since November 1996; and never had a situation in the shared hosting arena where downtime was too excessive to put any form of cash crunch on the business.

“But the point is many just use it for a marketing ploy, and no intention of honoring the guarantee, whether it’s in the SLA or not.”

You are correct, James.

Greetings SeverSonic:

“I decided that since I do not own the data center and have a high enough level of control, I can't offer an uptime guarantee.”

Our parent company researched building their own “state of the art” data center that had all of the “world class” facilities. The base cost, without equipment or people, was $1,000,000 to $2,000,000.

Last year Ryan and I (Peter) had the opportunity to go to a Web hosting exposition; and we learned most “solid” data centers cost $600 per square foot to build; and $300 per square foot to operate.

Most businesses in hosting don’t have that type of cash, so they co-locate or rent (aka dedicated) servers.

If you do your home work, however, you can create a situation where you can offer and have reliable up time guarantees even though you don’t have (or will have) total control.

Greetings UH-Matt:

“Anyone with dedicates at a DC where there is no guarantee should not really offer one themselves. OK so you might be willing to compensate - but by having a guarantee the customer is tricked into thinking you really do get 99.9%.”

I totally agree with you, Matt. Why purposely host your servers at a data center that has no hardware repair / replacement guarantee or an uptime guarantee, AND then state that you have a guarantee?

Greetings Vline:

“But that doesn’t mean you can say that other people cant offer 99.9% offer to get to the point most of my servers get 100% uptime a month all in the 100 days uptime zone I had to make a reboot there last month on one of my servers but it only took a couple of seconds I get no where near 40 mins downtime a month and never think I will.”

We have a server at Rackshack.net, and it is on our enterprise monitoring system (which is in use by all of Verio’s enterprise customers, General Motors, etc.).

From April 21, 2002 through yesterday, we have seen 56.8524 hours of down time.

I would find it hard to believe any server at Rackshack.net would have 100% up time for any reasonable period of time.

Furthermore, because Rackshack.net does not have a hardware repair or replacement guarantee, there is the potential of several days to weeks of down time.

Furthermore, because Rackshack.net does not have an up time guarantee, any company utilizing them and offering one would have to pull the money out of their own pocket to pay customers for down time.

That is all presuming that the hosting provider that offers a guarantee and uses an infrastructure with no guarantees will then, themselves, pay for the down time.

Thank you.

Your point about planning infastructure is valid. But with the best planning etc, things can go wrong. Invidiual customers, or a cluster of cusotmers may have problems if one/more than one server develops a fault. HDD, memory, software etc. But the big problem is often the connection. When it can "go down" short periods of time. Or a core router will develop a fault, causing emergency maintanance. Our shell servers connection had been up 96 das, before a core routers NPE decided to die and it needed replacing :(

The 3 days downtime I used for an example would be an extreme case.

Originally posted by Vline
I know a man like your self Matt and unitedhosting.co.uk couldnt offer the same offer of 99.9% since you have changed backbones to you new lower spec line than the one at EV1 since your site first came online back in August. Thats a change of backbone in less than 3 months of your EV1 box.

Vline,

Can I ask why you may be trying to smear our company name when infact we have a great reputation for providing a quality service?

Greetings James:

"Your point about planning infastructure is valid. But with the best planning etc, things can go wrong. Invidiual customers, or a cluster of cusotmers may have problems if one/more than one server develops a fault. HDD, memory, software etc. But the big problem is often the connection. When it can "go down" short periods of time."

In terms of an ISP connection from the customer to the server... most companies offer no guarantees.

You are correct on all things. Which is why disaster recovery is important as well as the ability for the provider of the service to have a chain they can follow for credits and service.

If we have an up time guarantee from our data center of 99.999% and their SLA matches ours, then if there is down time attributable to the data center, they are out of the money and not us.

If we have spare parts along with a primary vendor who offers an SLA they will repair the hardware within the same parameters of our SLA, then if our customer deserves a credit, the vendor pays and not us.

Part of the above is also having plans in place that when all else fails you are still covered.

What if down time is because of xzy that is not covered by the data center or hardware maintenance company?

What if this or that?

As long as you have proper planning, coverage from your partners matching your coverage, etc. then you most likely will be covered for 99.999% of the events.

What I have trouble understanding -- hence the start of this thread -- is how can some companies pick an infrastructure that provides them with no coverage then claim coverage?

Their posts and web site claim no SLA, no credits for downtime other than a guarantee.

Do those and similar companies pay for downtime out of their own pocket? Or do they hope no one will notice down time? Or do they tell their customers the servers have been up 100% of the time when they haven't been?

I like Deb's post from Future Quest where they give automatic credits for down time.

Our parent company is not that automated yet; but, Jake makes telephone calls, sends emails, etc. to customers who have had down time to let them know about the credits they will be getting.

Thank you.

If the company who provides you with the connection has an uptime garantee (quite often it will be 95% or something), and Money back for that option how would that be divided up evenally? Because surly each of your customers will have different packages costing different amounts per year/month.

In some cases a hosting package costing £50 a year (example) wont get any benefit from 5% of payment from one months of that 5% downtime. It would be pointless re paying someone £1. Unless of course they insist, in which case they will have a valid case. But I do not think an automated system is justifyable yet. Not with the current instability of the internet.

A very well planned system, will be completly redundant. But in many cases this is not feesable, espically for the new, smaller companies where 1-2 servers = there assets. A well planned operation could quite possibly have a down server turned around within mins. Using redundant servers and a simple restore method. Or just simply using that server which has been mirroring the primary down server. So if you offer 99% a month uptime garantee, you can easily have a turn around within this.

Which goes with your infastructure.

Some companies do just stick the words: "99.99% uptime garantee" etc. Usually most small companies. But there will eb no mentioning of it in there SLA, T&C, its just a front for there site. As I said, a "marketing ploy".

As you say, they probably reply to customers validy complaing with: Our enginners monitor our system 24/7 and there are issues". Those such comments annoy me, its obvious the company is a one man outfit, so way hard the fact, becuase its very obvious!

Originally posted by UH-Simon


Vline,

Can I ask why you may be trying to smear our company name when infact we have a great reputation for providing a quality service?

No you cant.

Regards

Originally posted by Vline



Recall the FDC server issue who where offline for over two weeks. It does happen.

Regards

FDC was down for 2 weeks because they only had 1 provider. Had they been set up with more than one provider they could have operated with one provider while securing a replacement vs being down while doing the same.

A good solid uptime record IS attainable with the proper network configuration and quality providers.

<EDITED>

;)

<EDITED>

Greetings Matt and Simon:

If Vline is making threats or trying to hack, you should report him to the moderators of WHT and take other appropriate action.

Thank you.

P.S. I don't doubt you, but let the moderators and authorities know.

You can promise all you want, It doesn't stop a hard drive from failing, cpu fan from burning out, blah blah blah..

If you have GOOD customers, people who know what they are doing and know the industry even a little they will understand a little bit of downtime here and there.

What people need to look for is a "pattern" of downtime.

And even then, even if you are down a few minutes every month, If you have the service, the customer support it won't matter that much..

I truly think people are tired of the poor service out there these days.. A person is not going to complain about downtime here and there if they know that you always bend over backwards to help them out when they have a problem. "Step up to the place" per-say anytime they need.

Bottom line, you can promise 100% uptime all you want, Unless you have the support, the personnal connection, customers that think you are there for them your uptime means crap to all but the most unknowledable of customers.

Originally posted by dynamicnet
Greetings Matt and Simon:

If Vline is making threats or trying to hack, you should report him to the moderators of WHT and take other appropriate action.

Thank you.

P.S. I don't doubt you, but let the moderators and authorities know.

What the hell are you on about now, <removed>... look you cant be me I dont even understand what your problem is... <removed>

Regards

how about you die or somthing?


YEA, comments like that just INFUSE a feeling of professionalism about you and your company...

I haven't seen such positive advertising since the OJ trial.

Way to go... People are going to come running to deal with you...

Good to know I am doing well at my marketing!

:)

Regards

You also might want to note how many warnings you've gotten and how close you are to being banned.

:)