Hosting Question - Uptime/Downtime

[Buncha]

I was wondering, what do you consider to be a reasonable amount of server downtime? I understand no one can maintain 100% (can they?). At what point should I consider looking for a different host?

Thanks for the input.

Dave

[SinSational]

a few minutes here and there is normal for maintenance/upgrades etc. a few hours here and there is not acceptable. is this a daily/weekly/monthly occurrence? if so, how long is it for?

[cd34]

100% means different things to different people. Some SLAs (Service Level Agreements) talk about 100% network uptime to certain providers, or 100% facilities uptime. And 100% to where? 100% to a router, to a group of routers or points on the net? 100% uptime to whom? If you are singlehomed at home, and your cable modem goes down, your site is down to you. Obviously that is beyond the scope of a hosting company.

Fives 9s is another common uptime phrase, meaning 99.999% uptime which is roughly 5 minutes of downtime per year.

Getting closer to that 100% gets expensive. You start having to deal with load balancing, clustered filesystems, specific architectures with the software running the site and being able to split processing smoothly without introducing other bottlenecks. Mixing 100% uptime with realtime performance gets very difficult.

With that said, hardware fails. Having a provider that can get to the equipment quickly, diagnose and fix the problem is important. Again, that doesn't come without cost.

So, it depends on how critical your business is, and the cost is that comes with that uptime. Then you have to balance that with security issues. Recently there have been some kernel security problems (last 6 months or so) which required a reboot. Without a cluster or failover setup, depending on the filesystem on the hard drive, its last check, the size, the number of files, you could easily eat a few minutes on a reboot. Its not like any OS is really immune to that. SP2 was recently released. FreeBSD had an issue with jailed routing and procfs, Linux had a recent issue with Denial of Service Handling.

For a single machine, I don't believe 5 9s (99.999%) is attainable without luck and somewhat expensive hardware.

The other thing you have to take into account is recovery time. In the event of a hard drive crash, how long is it before you are back online with your data in place. Your machine may be brought back to life in 15 minutes, but, if you have no data, you're really no better off than if you were down -- perhaps even worse off. Since you have no data, you would be handing out 404s which could remove you from a lot of link checkers. A 'down' site usually won't result in you being removed immediately.

Its also not impossible for a poorly behaved application to take a server to the point where it is up, but not responding quickly enough. Hardware and network are fine, but, Apache/php/mysql might have bogged the server to a point where you would consider it down.

You need to look for another host when you feel that you aren't getting the service you are paying for, or the response that you need. If your requirements for uptime exceed what the current provider can offer you, then, you need to consider moving. Jumping to an unknown isn't without its issues as well. Moving your sites can be somewhat traumatic. Many hosts will help you with this, but, sometimes debugging the sites after they have moved can be time consuming.

Basically, its a decision you have to make for yourself. If you are paying nickels for hosting, then you are going to make some sacrifice somewhere.

[Hostive.com]

CD34 said it all. Downtime sucks, but it is going to happen with every host.

[Buncha]

I'm asking because this is the first hosting company I've dealt with, so I don't have anything to compare it to.

According to Server Mojo, their servers are online a bit over 99%. They go down about twice a week, usually for about 15 minutes, but twice in the past month were down between 30-60 minutes.

Anyways, it's not 99.9% as many hosting companies claim. I'd say it's more like 99.4% give or take .2%-.3%.

Compared to other hosting companies, I'm paying a reasonable price. I know I'm not paying for 100% uptime.

I'm just wondering if this is a typical uptime/downtime rate. Or if I should be expecting better.

[SinSational]

have they informed you of why they go down so often (network, hardware)?

[Hostive.com]

Hmmm. I agree with SinSational... do they say what the sites go down for? 15 minutes is even kind of a long time. Even if they are just restarting Apache or doing a reboot it should take a few minutes TOPS.

[Buncha]

Actually, I haven't asked about the reasons for the downtimes. I guess I probably should.

[Hostive.com]

Originally Posted by Buncha

Actually, I haven't asked about the reasons for the downtimes. I guess I probably should.

Do.... let us know what they say. If it is a reputable host they should be honest, but sometimes answers can be a little fishy. Let us know

[neticule]

my previous host went down for over 100 hours, straight. i called them over 30 times, and got several excuses. do not, i repeat, do not, ever get hosted with IIC - it took me 10 calls and a big fight to get HALF of my money back, even though their website says "if your unsatisfied in any way, we will give you a full refund no questions asked."

the best tip i can give anyone just starting out is to get a good host, I wish I would have. Luckily im hosted on my friends server now, so if something goes wrong I can just complain to him lol

[Hostive.com]

Originally Posted by neticule

my previous host went down for over 100 hours, straight. i called them over 30 times, and got several excuses. do not, i repeat, do not, ever get hosted with IIC - it took me 10 calls and a big fight to get HALF of my money back, even though their website says "if your unsatisfied in any way, we will give you a full refund no questions asked."

the best tip i can give anyone just starting out is to get a good host, I wish I would have. Luckily im hosted on my friends server now, so if something goes wrong I can just complain to him lol

100 hours! WHOA! That's a long time. Glad you're happy now!

[grzepa]

@neticule: looking at their prices...they are LOW

[Head Boy]

I have hundreds of small domains spread over multiple hosts, so a small amount of down time on one isn't life threatening for me. What did get me stressed was when one of my hosts was down for well over 24 hours, and they tried to deceive me over the matter. I was offered compensation under their T&Cs for 3.5 hours and they deleted all the server stats. The loss of the stats for more than 100 domains was more of a problem than the down time, as I use them for periodic site changes and domain renewal decisions.

[ReverendSassy]

I don't honestly think that any host can be up 100% of the time but I must say that I'm hosting with Powerstorm Hosting and they guarantee 98.9% uptime and they keep their word

[Head Boy]

I had one host go down because a builder's back hoe took out three cables in the street outside. They carried the boxes to an emergency centre and got back on line within a few hours even before the cables got fixed. I thought that was good service.

[cd34]

98.9% allows 96 hours of downtime per year or 7.92 hours per month
even 99.9% allows 8.7 hours per year or .72 hours per month.

No hosting company likes downtime.

Buncha: Also consider that the service you are using is hosted at EV1, and EV1 has had a few partial network outages on their network in the last week. If they can't reach anyone due to EV1's network outage, they would report downtime on your current host.

You can look at http://ev1servers.net/english/aboutus/networks.asp and see that EV1 had some issues yesterday.

[cd34]

Originally Posted by Head Boy

I had one host go down because a builder's back hoe took out three cables in the street outside.

That's why hosting companies make sure there are diverse fiber paths, entering on opposite or adjacent sides of the building.

There's a reason they call them Rings and Loops.

[BigVikingAl]

ore than a few minutes at a time costs you $$$ and therefore is unacceptable. If they keep going down it's time to toast that host and let everyone else know about them!!

[Mr. Blue]

Originally Posted by neticule

my previous host went down for over 100 hours, straight. i called them over 30 times, and got several excuses. do not, i repeat, do not, ever get hosted with IIC - it took me 10 calls and a big fight to get HALF of my money back, even though their website says "if your unsatisfied in any way, we will give you a full refund no questions asked."

I just went through a similar experience with another host. I had to change because they were down 40 hours straight and gave no right answers when I called every hour, lol. Also a month of horrible service beforehand...constantly down.

When I asked for a refund they said they were going to take all these service charges out...so, umm, I basically said if I don't get my complete refund that I would make sure whenever someone asked about their hosting package on any of the adult boards I would post what a suckass company they were and that they would lose more money in the long run by trying to screw me over. 1 hour later a full refund, no deductions