All reputable web hosting providers offer some sort of uptime guarantee, but some don`t keep their promises. Fortunately for customers, an independent analysis of the availability of hosts by third parties is available. Take a look at how KnownHost behaved according to Hyperspin. All of these calculations assume that we know what downtime is. Downtime is generally considered to be whenever a system or service fails to function. Companies are doing everything they can to maximize availability. But what the customer sees and what the IT service provider sees can be two different things. […] Created with your existing customers. The reliability of the network is paramount! You need 99.9% + uptime. In fact, at KnownHost, we are on average better than 99.99% + uptime – because it […] We`ve generally talked about availability, downtime, and SLAs. But every IT infrastructure is different and service requirements vary depending on business needs.
It`s true that the move to the cloud has led people to start thinking about the availability of services or applications, rather than the availability of the network. But the principles of SLA are the same. Does the level of service provided meet your expectations? Often, an SLA states that service credit or refund is the customer`s sole and exclusive remedy if the provider fails to meet its availability obligation. While the seller tries to minimize their risk, limited credit or repayment is unlikely to make the customer complete if there is a significant default issue. Therefore, Customer must attempt to remove this wording or to ensure that the sole and exclusive remedy is closely suited so that Customer does not largely waive its right to other claims under the Agreement. If your company requires it, we are happy to put our money where our mouth is and guarantee 99.95% fixed and contracted availability. As part of your plan, you can sign up for our SLA Pro feature. There is a minimal monthly fee and your plan is then subject to the terms of our SLA. As a condition of receiving credit or refund, providers often require customers to report a service availability issue within a certain time frame, which can range from a few days to a month.
In addition, providers may impose certain requirements on how a credit or refund application should be submitted (e.B. via the supplier portal or to a specific email address). When certain requirements are imposed, customers should attempt to implement an internal mechanism to monitor the supplier`s availability obligation and report problems to the supplier. Vendors can provide an easily accessible mechanism for customers to monitor performance against the availability requirement. This information may be publicly available on a provider`s website. Reviewing a provider`s historical performance can be useful if you`re trying to negotiate better SLA terms or decide if it`s worth requesting changes to the SLA. The company, as a consumer of technology and applications, has to stop at some point and think, “Do we really need 99.999% uptime?” This is especially true when it comes to a 99.99% drop in exchange for a relatively terrible price to reduce unplanned downtime by just 31 seconds per year. For example, 99.999% is equivalent to 5 minutes and 16 seconds of unplanned availability per year. Although it is reasonable for the supplier to exclude certain events from an availability obligation, the scope of such exclusions should not be broad enough to exclude events that are actually under the control of the supplier (e.g.B problems caused by the supplier`s suppliers). If the exclusions are unreasonably broad, the availability obligation offered by the provider may not provide significant protection. And what good is a service if the quality is so bad that it is unusable? QoS issues may never appear in availability monitoring statistics. In addition to or in place of a refund or credit, a supplier may offer the right to terminate the contract if the availability obligation is not permanently fulfilled or if the refund or credit reaches the upper limit.
For example, a supplier may allow a customer to terminate their contract if they do not meet the availability obligation for three consecutive months or for four months in a 12-month period. It is important to note that if a customer is allowed to cancel, the customer should at least receive a refund of any unused prepaid fees for the rest of the contract. Want to guess how much downtime you can expect in a year with an uptime of 99.996% (KnownHost`s current average uptime)? 21 minutes and 2 seconds! Note that many KnownHost customers have never experienced downtime – they just don`t know what that word means! However, SLA metrics as a general tool can have human consequences – for example, if a company accepts that the availability of a web application pays attention to a certain level of compliance. Any important contract without an appropriate SLA (reviewed by a lawyer) is susceptible to intentional or unintentional misinterpretation. The SLA protects both parties in the agreement. For cloud services, whether infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), or software as a service (SaaS), service availability is often a significant issue for the customer, as the customer relies on the vendor to deploy and manage the infrastructure and associated components required to deliver the services. To address this issue, vendors often provide a service level agreement (SLA) that includes a commitment that the service will be available for a percentage of the time (e.B.99.9%) for a specific period of time (e.B week, month, or quarter). This is often referred to as an obligation of availability or availability. When reviewing and negotiating an SLA with an availability obligation, it is important to consider the following points. There is a drastic difference between 99% uptime and 99.9%. IT organizations that manage multiple service providers may want to implement operating level agreements (ARAs) that describe how certain parties involved in the IT service delivery process interact with each other to maintain performance.
Downtime management is an important part of SLA management. If you can`t resolve downtime, how do you know what availability is? Everyone who has dealt with IT support has heard of service level agreements. When considering what is expected in terms of SLA availability, it can be helpful to take a quick look at what SLAs are and their purpose. A blog post from master of Project Academy gives us a basic description: “A service level agreement indicates what both parties want to achieve with their agreement, as well as an overview of each party`s responsibilities, including the expected results with kpis.” A service level agreement (SLA) defines the level of service that a customer expects from a provider and defines the actions against which that service is measured and the corrective actions or penalties, if any, if the agreed service levels are not met. Usually, SLAs take place between companies and external suppliers, but they can also be between two departments within a company. The SLA is an essential part of any vendor agreement and will be cost-effective in the long run if the SLA is properly thought out and codified at the beginning of a relationship. It protects both parties and establishes remedies in the event of a dispute and avoids misunderstandings. This can save a lot of time and money for both the customer and the supplier. Management elements should include definitions of measurement standards and methodologies, reporting processes, content and frequency, a dispute resolution procedure, a indemnification clause that protects the customer from third-party disputes due to service level violations (but this should already be regulated in the contract) and a mechanism to update the agreement if necessary. As always, read the contract document carefully before signing to see what is promised. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) are essential in the IT industry.
IT managers need to know what to expect from their service providers. You need to understand each SLA before you sign it, especially when it comes to availability. Explore. A website hosted by a service provider with a 99% SLA can go down for more than three and a half days over the course of a year, with potentially ruinous consequences. An uptime of 99.9% or “three nines” allows for potential downtime of up to 8 hours, 45 minutes and 36 seconds per year. Vendors like to brag about the high availability of their systems by claiming to have a service level agreement (SLA) with an uptime of 99.999% (and above) because that`s what potential buyers want to hear. Customers should seek an obligation of availability appropriate to the nature of the service and the manner in which the service is provided. For example, if a service is critical and downtime would have a significant impact on a customer`s revenue, the customer should push for a percentage of availability of several nines.
Conversely, if a service is an ancillary service to a customer`s business and the impact on downtime would be negligible, a customer may agree with the commitment offered by the provider. Reliability statistics, in particular, are often used by suppliers as a selling point for services, addressing the “five (or more) new” availability and availability they can offer their customers. Given the different types of cloud services and how these services are used, there is no standard availability obligation on the part of providers. .