RE: Limits of reliability or is 99.999999999% realistic

["Christian Kuhtz" <ck () arch bellsouth net>]

> The reason for this perception is that non engineering folks don't
> understand the enginnering behind almost perfect uptimes.  Typical Joe
> executive just knows he believes his business is mission critical and must
> always be available.  If you give someone two router ports running hsrp,
> connect an alteon or similar 1 public many private ip switch to each of
> these, and put at least 2 servers behind each switch, provide instant
> generator power backup, and multiple links thru different providers to the
> net, this can provide the 99.bazillion 9s level that customers
> desire.  Some slas are meaningful.  Just make it so as time goes on in the
> outage, an increasing portion of the customer's costs are waived.  Nothing
> talks like money in business or politics.

IMHO, based on my previous professional services life, for people for whom
uptime really matters, link costs tend to be negligable.  For people who
really needed their stuff to work and would be SLA candidates, a carrot bigger
than 'your service is free for x yrs' would have to be presented.  Especially
for outtages costing millions of dollars in lost revenue, not to mention
lawsuits etc.

Just look at what happens to Amazon when their service craps out for 30
minutes, you got an interview on CNNfn right away.  Just look at the exposure.

Unless you got an SLA with teeth and penalties several multiples or magnitudes
of the cost of the service, they're pointless IMHO and just yet another
marketing tool a la "free installation" or "1st mth is free" type deals.

Cheers,
Chris

--
Christian Kuhtz <ck () arch bellsouth net> -wk, <ck () gnu org> -hm
Sr. Architect, Engineering & Architecture, BellSouth.net, Atlanta, GA, U.S.
"I speak for myself only."