You’ve heard it called impossible, unrealistic, and unachievable—100% uptime guarantees can be controversial. But when executed right, they’re incredibly valuable.
What’s so important about uptime and high availability, and how do they affect operations?
High availability is necessary for any company that relies on their IT systems to do business. In today’s world, that’s basically everyone.
The availability of an application determines how much value it can create, whether employees have the tools they need to do their jobs, and even whether customers can buy products or access support. Having high availability IT protects your company from losing revenue if end users can’t access data resources and critical business applications.
As Cisco puts it, “High availability means that an IT system, component, or application can operate at a high level, continuously, without intervention, for a given time period.”
High availability cloud hosting
Many cloud providers strive for maximum uptime, but few can truly say they offer 100% uptime guarantees.
This promise is a hard one to make: that no matter what, the system will be available to end users. If it’s not, the cloud provider is responsible for monetary compensation and repairs. That’s partly why SLAs (service level agreements) are put in place—to provide accountability.
That’s a hefty commitment to make if you can’t follow through. Here at CloudFirst, we promise a 100% uptime guarantee, but we don’t do it to be trendy or controversial. We do it because we’re capable of following through on that commitment, and we believe our clients deserve the best.
If you’re ready to confidently guarantee 100% uptime for your end users, you’re in the right place.
Different levels of availability and why the percentage matters
Now that we know high availability creates a better safety net for your company and provides more value to end users, let’s look at the numbers and explore how different levels of availability affect downtime rates.
There are a few common levels of high availability to touch on here:
- 99.8% availability (downtime of about 17 hours and 31 minutes per year)
- 99.98% availability (downtime of about 1 hour and 45 minutes per year)
- 99.99% availability (downtime of about 50 minutes per year)
- 99.999% availability (downtime of about 5 minutes per year)
“Typically the cost per outage hour is used as a determining factor in uptime requirements,” says IBM. “When talking about unplanned outages, the uptime requirements must be based only off of the scheduled working hours.”
Most applications strive to hit those five nines (99.999%) with five minutes of downtime, but—as we know—there’s another level that few attempt to touch: 100% uptime, a.k.a. no downtime at all.
As you can see, there’s a significant difference between even close percentages such as 99.8 and 99.98, which means seemingly small advances in availability can have a big impact on end user experience.
Even achieving 99.98% uptime generally involves significantly higher costs because it requires more advanced infrastructure, additional failover mechanisms, and faster response times. Based on that fact, it’s common to think that achieving 100% uptime would also be costly.
But locking down a higher availability and uptime percentage doesn’t have to cost you the farm.
How IT automation and cloud technologies enable 100% uptime
Every CIO knows what it feels like to be stretched thin. Guaranteeing 100% uptime could feel like an impossible task, but with IT automation, you don’t have to scramble to deliver on that promise.
IT automation and cloud technologies have the speed, accuracy, and backbone to uphold a 100% uptime guarantee without significant increases in cost or workforce.
A few main capabilities for effective IT automation tools are automated failover, automated backups, high redundancy infrastructure, business continuity, and load balancing.
Understanding critical IT automation features
Automated failover is the capability to switch over automatically to a redundant or standby system upon the failure or abnormal termination of the previously active system, without human intervention.
Automated backups are copies of recoverable data created periodically to reduce the risk of losing files and to improve recovery time after an attack. This includes automatically replicating data across multiple geographically distant data centers. Automated backups can greatly lift the burden of manually creating backups off your IT team’s shoulders.
High redundancy infrastructure refers to building data centers with everything from extra networking equipment to backup power supplies while managing intentional vs. unintentional data redundancy. Automated redundancy also supports system recovery by implementing distributed file systems, for example.
“Redundant copies of data are often central to database design and schema, helping ensure high availability, data integrity and consistency,” says IBM.
Having high data redundancy—much like implementing automated backups—means a high number of data copies in geographically distant locations. This results in faster recovery time in the case of an incident, and less (or no) downtime. Having low redundancy infrastructure increases the amount of possible downtime.
Having a business continuity plan (BCP) supports business functions in the event of unexpected incidents (such as a cyber attack or natural disaster) that impact all areas of a company, from procedures to employees. Business continuity ensures the company as a whole can still function as needed, with minimal downtime. In the case of a cyber attack, cybersecurity automation is an important part of any BCP.
Finally, IBM defines load balancing as “the process of distributing network traffic efficiently among multiple servers to optimize application availability and ensure a positive end-user experience.”
This, at the end of the day, is one of the highest priorities for any application or tool: a positive end user experience.
Tools such as Precisely’s Assure MIMIX solution and Shield’s HA4i solution are prime examples of IT automation providing high availability. They provide operational support, automated administration tasks, and 24-7 protection.
Assure MIMIX
This IT automation tool from Precisely protects your business against downtime and helps you meet the most aggressive service level agreements with flexible, scalable replication and failover automation, alongside:
- accurate and complete realtime replicas of your production data (across on-prem, hybrid, and cloud)
- customizable switch automation
- user-friendly graphical interface
Thousands of companies worldwide—from small businesses to global enterprises—depend on Assure MIMIX to prevent data loss and eliminate planned and unplanned downtime, achieving maximum uptime.
HA4i
This IT automation tool by Shield Advanced Solutions has been serving IBM Power users for 25 years. It prides itself on being cost-effective and easy to install while achieving high availability through:
- fully automated replication processes
- complete auditing functionality
- fully automated role-swap
HA4i uses the latest technology to provide a high-performance replication environment. It allows simple, fast, and effective role-swaps between instances with minimum disruption to end users.
Ansible IT automation by Red Hat
Dubbed the leader in infrastructure automation, Ansible IT automation strengthens your operational foundation so you can adopt AI enterprise-wide. Ansible also excels at:
- provisioning cloud infrastructure
- managing complex configurations
- enabling continuous integration and continuous delivery
- simplifying security processes
With less operational complexity and fewer manual tasks for your team to worry about, higher availability is a natural by-product.
HCL BigFix Enterprise+
This IT automation tool leverages cybersecurity, automation, and analytics capabilities to proactively identify and remediate vulnerabilities in real time, including:
- continuous compliance
- policy-driven orchestration
- out-of-the-box patch content
HCL BigFix Enterprise+ supports more than 100 different operating systems and provides rich capabilities for system provisioning, complex multi-endpoint and multi-platform patching, and software asset management.
What CloudFirst services should a CIO invest in to ensure a 100% uptime guarantee?
Beyond Assure MIMIX and HA4i, CloudFirst offers two solutions that line up with the above criteria: ezAvailability and ezVault.
ezAvailability
ezAvailability is your reliable solution for achieving maximum uptime on IBM i, AIX, Linux, and Windows. Our business continuity solution is meticulously crafted to ensure your critical applications remain accessible no matter what.
We do so by leveraging:
- scalable resources
- customizable settings
- 24-7 monitoring and support
- competitive pricing
With ezAvailability, you’re not only adopting a high availability solution; you’re investing in a resilient operational future with the fastest recovery time in the industry.
ezVault
ezVault is your trusted cloud backup and recovery solution that works seamlessly with IBM Power Systems and more, featuring:
- simple management
- secure backup
- high redundancy
- 24-7 monitoring and support
CloudFirst’s ezVault can take your data management strategy and backup processes to new heights.
Still on the fence about whether 100% uptime is possible? We take on all the risk and provide full accountability in our SLA.
Reach out today to discuss exactly how we make that happen and, more importantly, how we can make that happen for you.
