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  1. #1
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    100% uptime guarantee in the UK?

    I'm looking for a managed host which over 100% uptime guarantee other than Rackspace. The server MUST be located in the UK. I know there Rackspace are very good but I would like to see what else is out there.

    Steve
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  2. #2
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    What kind of budget have you got? Rackspace are probably the most expensive, but your budget will really dictate what options you have open to you ...

    Any idea on server specs and level of management?

    Dan
    █ Dan Kitchen | Technical Director | Razorblue
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  3. #3
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    Full management is a must. Literally all I want to do is create the account on the server, nothing else. I wouldn't want root access as it isn't my speciality.

    As for budget, as much as it costs. The quality of the service I recieve would be much more important. However, the reason I'm not automatically going with Rackspace is the price they charge. But I am aware that quality comes at a premium, so I'm just weighing up my options.

    As for server specs, nothing spectacular. Dual Xeons/Opertons, 2GB ram, 2x 160GB Hdd with raid. Not sure on which control panel yet.
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  4. #4
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    Do you just want a guarantee or a company that can actually deliver the 100% uptime?
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  5. #5
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    Absolute 100% uptime is not possible - no matter who you go with.

    What you want is the best you can possible get, with heavy penalties should things go wrong.

    Last time I looked rackspace gave 5% fee credit for every 30 minutes of outage.

    When a company states 100% uptime, the client should not pay for the entire month if its not - thats how you decide who is serious about a claim of 100% uptime.

    Nearly every single hosting company says they offer 100% uptime...
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  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by reiteration
    Absolute 100% uptime is not possible - no matter who you go with.

    What you want is the best you can possible get, with heavy penalties should things go wrong.

    Last time I looked rackspace gave 5% fee credit for every 30 minutes of outage.

    When a company states 100% uptime, the client should not pay for the entire month if its not - thats how you decide who is serious about a claim of 100% uptime.

    Nearly every single hosting company says they offer 100% uptime...
    I think the 100% uptime guarantee is just a sales gimmick, they often put in a maximum payout clause exactly the same as any SLA, its more important to look at the network redundancy and how close the technicians are to the actual servers/response time if something does go wrong. Also worth checking is do they replace the server straight away or try and repair it first...


  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Andy_UK2
    I think the 100% uptime guarantee is just a sales gimmick, they often put in a maximum payout clause exactly the same as any SLA, its more important to look at the network redundancy and how close the technicians are to the actual servers/response time if something does go wrong. Also worth checking is do they replace the server straight away or try and repair it first...
    It's important to notice the difference between an uptime SLA and an uptime guarantee. It's quite obvious that nobody can guarantee 100% uptime, but what they can do is offer a service level agreement which equates to refunds based on the amount of downtime where applicable.

    Dan
    █ Dan Kitchen | Technical Director | Razorblue
    █ ddi: (+44) (0)1748 900 680 | e: dkitchen@razorblue.com
    █ UK Intensive Managed Hosting, Clusters and Colocation.
    █ HP Servers, Cisco/Juniper Powered BGP Network (AS15692).

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by RazorBlue - Dan
    It's important to notice the difference between an uptime SLA and an uptime guarantee. It's quite obvious that nobody can guarantee 100% uptime, but what they can do is offer a service level agreement which equates to refunds based on the amount of downtime where applicable.

    Dan
    I take your point, but the amount that most people will pay back (say for example a months fee on a decent server approx £100) is absolutely peanuts compared to the amount that could be lost by a company in a few minutes... so how much does an SLA really mean? (saying that we've got one as well as everyone else ;-).

    What I was saying was look at the response time and policies when it comes to hardware too rather than being satisfied with an SLA or 'guarantee'.

    Andy.


  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by reiteration
    Absolute 100% uptime is not possible - no matter who you go with.
    I beg to differ.

    Quote Originally Posted by reiteration
    What you want is the best you can possible get, with heavy penalties should things go wrong.
    That is pointless to customers were an hour of downtime can cost them 10s of thousands of pounds in lost business.
    Coreix™ | your solution™ www.coreix.net - 08000226734 - ISO27001 Certified
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  10. #10
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    I dont think it is possible for 100 % uptime, but maybe some companies are advertising this, I have had good experience with uk2.net, they are good and i have experienced NO downtime with them...
    -Alex.

  11. #11
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    Andy, Cabalstudios...

    You both make good points, I don't think anyone was saying that 100% uptime is impossible, of course it's possible, but you can't guarantee it because the law of averages says that some day, no matter how redundant things are, your site is going to go down. Just look at Google a few years back ...

    If you need a real high uptime solution, you don't pay &#163;100 for a server, simple as that. Good redundant clustering solutions come at a price, and if you really need that security not only should you be in consultations with premium managed services providers, but also with your insurance company. We have a number of customers that went down this route.

    Dan
    █ Dan Kitchen | Technical Director | Razorblue
    █ ddi: (+44) (0)1748 900 680 | e: dkitchen@razorblue.com
    █ UK Intensive Managed Hosting, Clusters and Colocation.
    █ HP Servers, Cisco/Juniper Powered BGP Network (AS15692).

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by cabalstudios
    I beg to differ.

    That is pointless to customers were an hour of downtime can cost them 10s of thousands of pounds in lost business.
    *Absolute* 100% uptime is impossible.
    Unless your monitoring the servers each and EVERY second from multiple locations you simply cannot guarantee no outage (how about every 10th of a second ?)

    What about "acts of God" ?

    Are you saying you can *absolutly* guarantee 100% uptime ?

    If you can I'm moving all our customers to you as we can make an absolute fortune :-)
    Last edited by reiteration; 06-20-2006 at 04:25 PM.
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  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by reiteration
    *Absolute* 100% uptime is impossible.
    Unless your monitoring the servers each and EVERY second from multiple locations you simply cannot guarantee no outage (how about every 10th of a second ?)
    Absolute 100% uptime is certainly possible, if you look at our website there are 2 servers (at time of this writing) that have 100% uptime...you can also Guarantee a 100% uptime...what you CANT to is follow through with that guarantee, which means that what someone says will happen has to be taken with a grain of salt.

    Looking at "guarantees" is pointless, look at their network, look at their support staff, look at the quality of their servers, if they are a fly-by-night operation OF COURSE they will offer a 100% guarantee, what do they have to lose? You need to ask them what makes them think they can afford to pay that guarantee if it doesn't work out.
    Joe Cooter - <jcooter(at)sliqua.com>
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  14. #14
    Good luck finding what you need.. Had trouble myself.

    thanks''Click Freak

  15. #15
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    Lets agree to disagree, nothing is absolute in this life.

    We have had no outage since we began monitoring (by an independant external company nearly a year ago) but all our contracts
    have clauses in them that allow for a very small amount each month. If we go over that we give them the whole months fees back.

    I'm sure everyone here has the same only they don't want to admit it.

    This is not fee credits like most providers. This is an actual cheque and we've had to pay out twice in nearly 8 years.

    Put your money where your mouth is - anything else means nothng.

    Guaranteeing something doesn't mean it won't happen.
    Judge the company on what they give you when it does.
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  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by cabalstudios
    I beg to differ.

    That is pointless to customers were an hour of downtime can cost them 10s of thousands of pounds in lost business.
    Absolute 100% is wishful thinking. And typically the people who demand it have one server. You can get close, very close, with a nicely highly available system, and taking things further maybe a nicely global load balanced system. Then one day there will be a glitch in software you forgot to stage properly or forget to renew your domain name.

    N/A.
    ----

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by reiteration
    *Absolute* 100% uptime is impossible.
    Unless your monitoring the servers each and EVERY second from multiple locations you simply cannot guarantee no outage (how about every 10th of a second ?)

    What about "acts of God" ?

    Are you saying you can *absolutly* guarantee 100% uptime ?

    If you can I'm moving all our customers to you as we can make an absolute fortune :-)
    I agree, though it can come extremely close! I think people don't ask the right questions when looking at providers... questions like what do you do if there is a problem with the hardware and my server goes down etc? Whats the response time? etc

    Many just look at an SLA/guarantee as proof of quality but this isn't the case.


  18. #18
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    A lot of discussion here about my "100% uptime" request, so I guess I should clarify what I meant...

    Basically, I meant 100% uptime from the network side of things. I'm aware that its virtually impossible to guarantee true 100% uptime for a server, but I don't see why it cannot be possible from the network side of things. After all, even Rackspace cannot guarantee their server hardware isn't going to break can they.

    So to sum up, I'm looking for a host with proven 100% uptime for their network.
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  19. #19
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    Thats a whole different story...

    100% uptime for *their" network is quite easy, but then again no one can guarantee 100% that *their* network is visible to the rest of the internet.

    Just my 2 pence worth - I'm sure someone will try and make the claim they can *guarantee* absolute 100% network uptime outside their network but sadly no one can make that *absolute* claim, not even rackspace.

    And because of this no one can claim 100% absolute uptime that their network is visible to the rest of the internet.
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  20. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by reiteration
    Thats a whole different story...

    100% uptime for *their" network is quite easy, but then again no one can guarantee 100% that *their* network is visible to the rest of the internet.

    Just my 2 pence worth - I'm sure someone will try and make the claim they can *guarantee* absolute 100% network uptime outside their network but sadly no one can make that *absolute* claim, not even rackspace.

    And because of this no one can claim 100% absolute uptime that their network is visible to the rest of the internet.
    A company that uses one router and/or one switch is obviously not going to be able to provide 100% uptime. No company can control traffic that is outside of their network, alot of people know this so there is no need to make a big deal out of it.

    What you are failing to remember is that some companies spend a lot of time and invest large amounts of money on their network topology and run 2-3 routers with an additional 2-4 layers of networking before the customers uplink. Thus allowing for 100% uptime solutions not just on their network but also on their infrastructure. Your posts are only discrediting and insulting such companies.

    As far as I can see you are trying to justify not having a 100% uptime by making false claims and discrediting all companies in this market.

    What the OP has requested is *very* doable not just in the UK but in many other countries.


  21. #21
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    cabalstudios,

    We have all that and more, we specialize in clustered hosting with *no* single points of failure - anywhere.

    We are at the top-end of the hosting tree.

    What annoys me is when *anyone* says they can *absolutely* guarantee 100% uptime when they obvisouly can't.

    I'm not trying to insult anyone, just making my very valid point that you can have all the redundency in the world yet still not be able to *absolutly* guarantee 100% uptime.

    If anyone can then we'll move all our cutsomers to you and make a fortune, unfortunalty everyone knows contracts make allowances for outage, and if they don't run a mile.

    You can check our uptime anytime you like...

    http://www.siteimprove.com/sitealarm...?sc_id=4807217
    Ultra High Performance UK VPS without compromise.
    HPe servers, Intel NVMe DC P3700/P4600 SSD
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  22. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by cabalstudios
    A company that uses one router and/or one switch is obviously not going to be able to provide 100% uptime. No company can control traffic that is outside of their network, alot of people know this so there is no need to make a big deal out of it.

    What you are failing to remember is that some companies spend a lot of time and invest large amounts of money on their network topology and run 2-3 routers with an additional 2-4 layers of networking before the customers uplink. Thus allowing for 100% uptime solutions not just on their network but also on their infrastructure. Your posts are only discrediting and insulting such companies.

    As far as I can see you are trying to justify not having a 100% uptime by making false claims and discrediting all companies in this market.

    What the OP has requested is *very* doable not just in the UK but in many other countries.

    Absolutely, great point, though most go with a 99.99% uptime to allow for an act of God or something where all connected datacenters get destroyed by meteors!!!. If you don't check out the datacenter/network as well as the company you could be caught out if there isn't adequate redundancy.

    No one can guarantee that your individual server will not be down at some point however and this is where you should find out about the locations of techs compared to the servers/response time guarantees and hardware replacement guarantees.
    Last edited by Andy_UK2; 06-22-2006 at 08:47 AM.


  23. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by reiteration
    cabalstudios,

    We have all that and more, we specialize in clustered hosting with *no* single points of failure - anywhere.

    We are at the top-end of the hosting tree.

    What annoys me is when *anyone* says they can *absolutely* guarantee 100% uptime when they obvisouly can't.

    I'm not trying to insult anyone, just making my very valid point that you can have all the redundency in the world yet still not be able to *absolutly* guarantee 100% uptime.

    If anyone can then we'll move all our cutsomers to you and make a fortune, unfortunalty everyone knows contracts make allowances for outage, and if they don't run a mile.

    You can check our uptime anytime you like...

    http://www.siteimprove.com/sitealarm...?sc_id=4807217
    I am not trying to make this personal or anything, but it surprises me that some of your comments are discrediting yourself? If you have a proven track record of 100% availability and you strive to maintain that 100% what else would one need?
    I am aware that SLAs are there to protect the company aswell as the customer but sometimes the SLA is not good enough as I mentioned previously.

    I suppose we can let this rest as your point is valid and I hope you agree that mine and others who say this can be achieved are also valid points. It is also down to how you would determine what 100% uptime is, as everyone seems to have their own version.

    I hope the OP finds the right company for the solution he is looking to acquire.


  24. #24
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    100% uptime is not a guarantee, only a QOS.

    While we maintain 100% currently, we still do not guarantee 100% in the future.
    What we guarantee is we'll do our very best but should we fail you'll be paid compensation for a months fees

    While you can get very near to it, its not absolute - and no one can argue that.

    I agree nothing personal :-)
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  25. #25
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    Hello,

    I do not feel that as a provider you should absolutely guarantee it; however, I do believe you can provide it. Multi home, geographically diversified, multiple power grids, UPS, genators, ect, with multiple DNS servers, switches, entry, points ect is is possible. It is just very expensive.

    You could put four different servers in four different datacetners, on 12 different providers, with 12 different swtiches, core routers, distrubtion units, 6 genators, ect. However, when I can pay 1/100th that price and have our servers up for 100% anyway I am going to stick with the ecnomical way.
    Synersis Media | Boutique Technology Marketing Agency

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