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The myth of 99.9% uptime
Statistics advertised by hosting companies concerning their uptime don't lie, but they just don't tell the whole truth. Imagine your chosen hosting company advertises 99.9% uptime. This makes no more than 40 minutes of downtime for the past month. But what they are not telling you is when did that downtime occur. Was it during busy hours or at night when almost noone visits your website. Also, imagine a 99.9% uptime for the past year... this makes no more than 8 hours of downtime. Wow! That's a whole business day. Such a downtime happening at one time may cause great harm to your business, potential loss and bad reputation.
Another point is the monitoring interval. Hosting companies never tell how their servers are being monitored. Who monitors the services and on what interval. If it's a 3rd party monitoring service - it's all ok, you can always get the full data. However, when monitored internally within the hosting company it's like playing hide and seek with your eyes closed. What if a server is monitored every 15 minutes. Sounds good when advertised, but what happens during that period? Let's say there is a power failure which causes the server to restart. That makes about 5-6 minutes of downtime until the disks are checked for errors and all services are restored. That is a downtime that the monitoring service won't even notice.
So, when choosing a new hosting company you should ask on what interval the services are monitored. Some companies claim they have a 99.99% uptime, let's see where that comes from and if it's even possible. Calculations show that this makes no more than 4 minutes of downtime for the past month for example. So if they advertise 99.99% uptime, but the monitoring period is more than 4 minutes - don't trust them, it's just not possible.
Finally, what is the definition of being "down". No PING, no webserver, no mailserver? When asking questions about uptime/downtime guarantees always ask what services are being monitored. A 99.99% guarantee is nothing if it's only PING that is being checked. Imagine the server is just fine, but the webserver software is not working for some reason. Noone will even notice until customer complaints arise.
Now that you know the truth about uptime and stats, you can decide whether your company is really strict with their uptime guarantee or it's just an advertising trick.
Statistics advertised by hosting companies concerning their uptime don't lie, but they just don't tell the whole truth. Imagine your chosen hosting company advertises 99.9% uptime. This makes no more than 40 minutes of downtime for the past month. But what they are not telling you is when did that downtime occur. Was it during busy hours or at night when almost noone visits your website. Also, imagine a 99.9% uptime for the past year... this makes no more than 8 hours of downtime. Wow! That's a whole business day. Such a downtime happening at one time may cause great harm to your business, potential loss and bad reputation.
Another point is the monitoring interval. Hosting companies never tell how their servers are being monitored. Who monitors the services and on what interval. If it's a 3rd party monitoring service - it's all ok, you can always get the full data. However, when monitored internally within the hosting company it's like playing hide and seek with your eyes closed. What if a server is monitored every 15 minutes. Sounds good when advertised, but what happens during that period? Let's say there is a power failure which causes the server to restart. That makes about 5-6 minutes of downtime until the disks are checked for errors and all services are restored. That is a downtime that the monitoring service won't even notice.
So, when choosing a new hosting company you should ask on what interval the services are monitored. Some companies claim they have a 99.99% uptime, let's see where that comes from and if it's even possible. Calculations show that this makes no more than 4 minutes of downtime for the past month for example. So if they advertise 99.99% uptime, but the monitoring period is more than 4 minutes - don't trust them, it's just not possible.
Finally, what is the definition of being "down". No PING, no webserver, no mailserver? When asking questions about uptime/downtime guarantees always ask what services are being monitored. A 99.99% guarantee is nothing if it's only PING that is being checked. Imagine the server is just fine, but the webserver software is not working for some reason. Noone will even notice until customer complaints arise.
Now that you know the truth about uptime and stats, you can decide whether your company is really strict with their uptime guarantee or it's just an advertising trick.
