As more and more enterprises, their clients and end-users classify applications as “mission-critical”, the financial risks associated with system downtime continue to escalate. In May 2013, the Aberdeen Group performed a comprehensive survey and found that the average cost per hour of downtime was more than $163,000 US dollars*. With profit margins and brand reputations on the line, small businesses and large enterprises alike must recognize the importance of ensuring maximum availability for all critical applications.
And how much downtime is too much?
Generally speaking, downtime is the term used in reference to periods of system unavailability. It can be caused by an incredible number of factors, from human error to power outages, network outages, system failures, code roll-outs and more. But regardless of the cause, how much is too much? What percentage of Uptime are you trying to achieve? Consider this chart that evaluates different uptime levels expressed using the common 9's:
| Uptime Percentage | Average Annual Downtime |
|---|---|
| 99% | 87 hours, 40 minutes |
| 99.9% | 8 hours, 46 minutes |
| 99.99% | 52 minutes, 36 seconds |
| 99.999% | 5 minutes, 16 seconds |
| 99.9999% | 31.6 seconds |
Before deciding how to implement high availability, you should first determine what systems or applications require high availability. We highly recommend creating a comprehensive list of systems and categorizing each accordingly. You should then determine what level of availability each category deserves, because the higher the availability, the higher the cost. For example, public facing websites might have a higher priority than email servers, or a CRM. Consider all systems carefully.
Components of High Availability
There are many components to every IT implementation, and of course to every successful high availability solution. You must have redundant infrastructure in an alternate location such as servers, storage and network infrastructure, you must replicate data in anticipation of an outage to ensure synchronization, and when disaster strikes, you must be prepared to redirect traffic from the primary site to the alternate site seamlessly for your users. A true high availability solution requires implementation on various levels. Total Uptime helps complete the picture with solutions that can redirect and reroute traffic.
