Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Client asks for 100% uptime

serverfault.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 100 posts

Re: Client asks for 100% uptime

#2

Post by msy »

It's always helpful when clients give unambiguous signs of unreasonable insanity upfront instead of hiding it until you're halfway through the project. It makes running away as far and fast as humanly possible so much easier.

Re: Client asks for 100% uptime

#3

Post by joelhaasnoot »

Another option not mentioned in the thread is to accept it, and pay any of the fines associated with not meeting it. This happens all the time in public tenders and contracts, where the fines are calculated into the business risk. It does mean that the organization needs to set the right fines to make that unfeasible.

Re: Client asks for 100% uptime

#4

Post by eli »

joelhaasnoot wrote: post #3

Another option not mentioned in the thread is to accept it, and pay any of the fines associated with not meeting it. This happens all the time in public tenders and contracts, where the fines are calculated into the business risk. It does mean that the organization needs to set the right fines to make that unfeasible.

I've definitely seen hosting services do this. Sure, there's a 100% SLA, but if you actually read it, it says you get back the pro-rated monthly fee for the time it was down. So, in other words, you don't have to pay for it when it isn't working. Not much of an SLA.

Re: Client asks for 100% uptime

#5

Post by joelhaasnoot »

eli wrote: post #4
joelhaasnoot wrote: post #3

Another option not mentioned in the thread is to accept it, and pay any of the fines associated with not meeting it. This happens all the time in public tenders and contracts, where the fines are calculated into the business risk. It does mean that the organization needs to set the right fines to make that unfeasible.

I've definitely seen hosting services do this. Sure, there's a 100% SLA, but if you actually read it, it says you get back the pro-rated monthly fee for the time it was down. So, in other words, you don't have to pay for it when it isn't working. Not much of an SLA.

Public transport does this too: in order to provide a robust, perfect implementation of a schedule, you need extra busses/trains/street cars (expensive capital goods) and extra manhours (generally most expensive part of the operation). Rather than invest too much money in making sure the schedule can be met, it's cheaper to pay fines when there are delays.

Re: Client asks for 100% uptime

#7

Post by JoachimSchipper »

Seems reasonable, actually. "100%" is obviously not going to be achievable, but "external users should be ok if our office network fails" is not necessarily a bad requirement. There are lots of things that may make this client happy: a VPN to an "internal" server in an external data center, synchronous replication, etc.
Post reply on HN