What is 99.9% Uptime?

Uptime is a calculated percentage on the minds of every provider and web hosting customer. This figure refers to the amount of time your site will be accessible on the web to internet users. As of now, 99.9% is the industry standard offered by most hosting companies today, though some are bold enough to advertise a percentage as high as 100%. So how is a 99.9% uptime actually determined? Let’s have a closer look.

How is 99.9% Translated in Terms of Time

The availability of a web server is generally expressed as an uptime percentage over the period of one year’s time. It typically refers to the amount of unplanned downtime for a system, minutes that are tallied and then divided by the total number of minutes in a given year. In most cases, uptime is derived as a result of the produced percentage of downtime as they are essentially exact opposites. Using the common 99.9% uptime as an example, over a one year period, the average server would be down an estimated 10.1 minutes per week, 43.2 minutes per month and 8.76 hours per year.

Even though a server may experience downtime due to scheduled maintenance that might not be included in the guarantee, 99.9% is such a high rating that it assures that your site will be up and running with regularity. The problem with uptime and guarantees is that one too many hosts simply make the claim instead of actually measuring it to make sure the percentage is accurate. Several companies have been exposed for simply resetting the counters on their systems, generating false percentages that lead one to believe that a server has been up for a certain amount of time when it may have only been accessible for a week.

Determining Uptime

There are essentially two ways to determine the accuracy of an uptime guarantee: you can rely on the measurements of the provider or turn to a third-party service. Being that the web hosting company has to save face in order to sell packages, you are likely to get more accurate results from a third-party measurement. The purpose of an uptime monitoring service is to monitor the web host’s infrastructure, giving alert when failures are detected while maintaining records of uptime performance. This type of service allows providers to know when problems arise so they may take the appropriate action to rectify the issues. Web hosting companies and customers can both benefit from this type of service as the evaluation helps determine if service level agreements and uptime guarantees are being met.

That 99.9% uptime guarantee advertised by your host is vital for the simple fact that if isn’t met, your site isn’t available. An inaccessible website is the easiest way to kill your online business as no sales can be made when the server goes down. If you are serious about your bottom line, we suggest doing a bit of investigating of your own to determine uptime instead of trusting the provider’s word. All servers are bound to experience issues here and there, but it is much better to put your faith in the hands of someone who is completely honest and makes sure these problems are kept to a minimum.

No related posts.