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Most service providers boast that they give 100% SLA, are the users actually getting it?
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Most service providers boast that they give 100% SLA, are the users actually getting it?

Most companies in the market are now available with 100% SLA features is true to get the 100% SLA ?. Can anyone tell me is it true or how they achieved it ?

Comments

  • Obviously not. How can you get 100% SLA. It means 0 downtime AT ALL. No one can do that. This uptime SLA.

    This means you need 100% power, 100% network and then 100% server to be up. Too many factors.

  • @concerto49 thanks i really appreciated your words.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    We do not offer it however, we do have some equipments with enough redundancy to achieve 100% uptime but even those have some downtime when a failure occurs before the redundancy takes over (not all).
    For example, we had some issues lately with Level 3 dropping routes and this meant a bit of downtime before other paths became available, this happened already some 3 times last month and it is not only this month that happened.
    Also if a DDoS hits the node, even with filtering, it takes a bit until filtering kicks in or the nulling happens, attacks these days are in average over 1 gbps and are saturating the port meaning heavy packet loss for a while.
    These are external factors you cannot defend against, small interruptions and malfunctions are to be expected also in a shared environment you will have abusers, it takes a few minutes before they can be kicked/shutdown, we have watch 24/7, automated monitoring, multiple providers, multiple 10 gbps lines, standby lines without commit, and the networking part is still not bullet-proof.
    If customers are not happy, the only choice is to refund pro-rated, we never promised it, but they have the right to go to a better provider at any time.

  • Even 99.99% availability means that you have to run HA cluster.
    100% is the utopia.

  • It's not utopia, I know for a fact (have read an article in newspaper, can't remember which one) that Yahoo has managed to maintain 100% uptime on their servers throughout the whole year of 2012.

  • @Maounique said:
    We do not offer it however, we do have some equipments with enough redundancy to achieve 100% uptime but even those have some downtime when a failure occurs before the redundancy takes over (not all).

    100% is 0 downtime. No way out of it. The bigger players do 99.9999% or however many 9s but never 100%. Whatever you have can't do 100%. If you shut it off it's 100% downtime SLA :p

    Great to see you putting all the redundancy in though :)

  • Most of them say:99.9%

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran
    edited October 2013

    @kontam said:
    It's not utopia, I know for a fact (have read an article in newspaper, can't remember which one) that Yahoo has managed to maintain 100% uptime on their servers throughout the whole year of 2012.

    You can be lucky. However, keeping the servers up is different from having network drops and those happen for everyone and it happens outside of your network at times so there is nothing you can do.
    Yes, I know of cases of systems running for years or even over a decade, as I said luck happens, but shit happens as well. There is one thing to be reasonably sure it will not go down or downtime will be a few minutes a month, and another to be sure it will never happen at all.

    Think of it like you think about the speed of light, you can spend more energy (read: money) to accelerate further and keep growing the spending, but you will never reach 100% and the difference from 99.9999 and 99.9998 could cost you as much as the difference from 90 to 99.9998.

  • I know for a fact (have read an article in newspaper

    I remember reading in several newspapers that Saddam had WMD's... :P

  • @concerto49 said:
    The bigger players do 99.9999% or however many 9s but never 100%.

    In math, unlimited 9s means 100%

  • A SLA is not a guarantee of up time, but an agreement for compensation when a the given target up time is not met.

    Thanked by 2MiguelQ jar
  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @Microlinux said:
    A SLA is not a guarantee of up time, but an agreement for compensation when a the given target up time is not met.

    Correct. But the conversation went into uptime :)

    However, it is good that you reminded ppl here what a SLA is, some are confusing the terms.
    Even if we do not offer it someone came and asked for compensation for a 10 minutes reboot on a 15/year server or so. That would be correct if we were offering SLA (even tho it was a very small fraction of a cent), but even then we would have had to offer 100% or something like 99.98 for the agreement to apply for the month, not to mention the year.

  • @Maounique said:
    Even if we do not offer it someone came and asked for compensation for a 10 minutes reboot on a 15/year server or so. That would be correct if we were offering SLA (even tho it was a very small fraction of a cent), but even then we would have had to offer 100% or something like 99.98 for the agreement to apply for the month, not to mention the year.

    Well, in the case you mention (10 minutes reboot on 15/year server), your cost for offering 100% SLA is pretty low(few cents total maybe). So why not offer it for marketing reason.

  • c0yc0y Member
    edited October 2013
    1. Mathematicly 100% is from anywhere between 99.5% and 100.5% (would need to write 100.0% if you truly mean ALWAYS 0 downtime)
    2. SLA usually means some useless credit, usually means that they'll credit you for the price to rent it for the downtime timeframe. (as in 1 hour downtime on $7.20/mo service means you get $0.01 credit.. :-P)
  • @DomainBop said:
    I remember reading in several newspapers that Saddam had WMD's... :P

    No need for sarcasm.

    100% uptime IS possible unless you start to count in floods, earthquakes, third world war, alien attack...if you follow that logic than nothing is ever certain in life and you will always use that as an excuse. You need to calculate your odds with the parameters you have right now for this moment and obviously 'never-failing' or '100% uptime' is possible, otherwise people wouldn't have managed to achieve it.

    If a company guarantees you 100% with SLA then why worry whether they manage or not, you will be reimbursed. Every reputable web hosting business will do everything not to shit in their own bowl by promising something they can't deliver.

  • c0yc0y Member

    @kontam said:
    If a company guarantees you 100% with SLA then why worry whether they manage or not, you will be reimbursed. Every reputable web hosting business will do everything not to shit in their own bowl by promising something they can't deliver.

    Get that fancy candy out of your head, this is the real world: where lying in business is called marketing

  • 100% is marketing strategy only... 100% absolutly NOT

  • @Frost said:
    Get that fancy candy out of your head, this is the real world: where lying in business is called marketing

    I agree, there's a lot of false advertising but mostly by amateurs running their 'business' from their homes. Don't mistake major player in this game with kids on the bottom of the food chain.

    I don't know what's so hard to understand here. If you build your infrastructure to be fully redundant then you can guarantee 100% uptime. Simple as that. A guarantee is formal assurance backed by warranty and it's usually conditioned with present QoS record.

    IWStack by Prometheus can deliver 100% uptime just as SoftLayer can. It's no different other than the scale of their infrastructure.

    Thanked by 1jimpop
  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran
    edited October 2013

    @kontam said:
    IWStack by Prometheus can deliver 100% uptime just as SoftLayer can. It's no different other than the scale of their infrastructure.

    Actually no. 100% uptime is more than uptime of the VM, means service uptime and that includes the network.
    If we get hit by a 30 gbps DDoS chances are your service will become unavailable due to high packet loss, or even full packet loss for a couple of minutes if your node is targeted.
    Also, if a node fails, it takes some minutes before the service restarts on another. Could be as high as 10 minutes if your VM is among the last to start.
    Even with redundancy across providers with very short DNS TTL it will still not be instant, network routes in internet can fail and it takes a minute or two for the carrier to switch and BGP to adapt.
    100% is100%, Amazon failed, cloudflare failed, OVH failed, Paypal failed, banks failed stock exchanges failed, everyone fails at some time, there is no such thing as 100% guarantee, it is like promising the moon.

    Thanked by 1c0y
  • jhjh Member

    100% uptime is one thing, but there's an SLA target as well - i.e. what percentage of the time the company actually aims to hit their own SLA.

  • 100% SLA is actually (100% uptime - agreeable downtime conditions). Thus we can say that 90% actual uptime equals 100% agreed level. It's only terms, words and marketing gimmicks :), unless you are a real engineer that needs to know the actual performance of your system.

  • @Maounique said:
    Actually no. 100% uptime is more than uptime of the VM, means service uptime and that includes the network.

    You can't deliver 100% uptime, fine. I was just trying to make a point.

    @Maounique said:
    100% is100%, Amazon failed, cloudflare failed, OVH failed, Paypal failed, banks failed stock exchanges failed, everyone fails at some time, there is no such thing as 100% guarantee, it is like promising the moon.

    If your brand new BMW 5-series brakes down does that mean that BMW can't offer 5-year guarantee anymore? I hope you see what I mean.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @kontam said:
    If your brand new BMW 5-series brakes down does that mean that BMW can't offer 5-year guarantee anymore? I hope you see what I mean.

    BMW offers to repair it for free it it breaks, does not guarantee you it will never break in 5 years.
    If I say, hey, if you get downtime, we will fix it for free, no need to pay us more, you will say I am joking, but yeah, I get the point.

  • In reality a few Gbps of DOS attack would take a lot of the providers here down.

    TBH when I read 100% uptime guarantees I think they're referring to having a backup power supply and some redundancy in their architecture, I wouldnt take any guarantee seriously unless it's < 97%.

    Even then, actually getting some recompense from these cheap providers is likely to be not worth the time, as it tends to be a fraction of the monthly/yearly price you pay for the server, basically not worth the time of writing the ticket.

  • 99% monthly uptime is possible, but not 100% guarantee

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited October 2013

    @Frost said:
    Get that fancy candy out of your head, this is the real world: where lying in business is called marketing

    Because people are dumb and if you don't lie to them they'll go find someone who will. Survival is doing what you have to do. I stand by honesty but I'll never be on top of the food chain.

  • BrianHarrisonBrianHarrison Member, Patron Provider

    @consolepark said:
    Most companies in the market are now available with 100% SLA features is true to get the 100% SLA ?. Can anyone tell me is it true or how they achieved it ?

    Most users forget that 100% uptime SLAs will exempt scheduled maintenance periods or uptime is counted merely as network connectivity.

    Even so, most providers don't seem to meet their SLAs: https://www.statuscake.com/hostreport/

  • @dnwk said:
    In math, unlimited 9s means 100%

    No it doesn't. It converges to 100%

  • @vedran said:
    No it doesn't. It converges to 100%

    Yes. It does. I still remember a heated argument with my math teacher on whether 9.99999999...... = 10 Though that poor teacher could not give me an convincing argument.

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