Overview
Hosting uptime is an important element of web hosting service. It refers to the amount of time a web server is online and available during a certain period of time. When your web hosting server is online, it simply means that your website is available for people to visit.
Some web hosting providers may claim 100% uptime with their services. This means that the hosting server is online 24/7 usually for an entire year. Although this is theoretically possible, there is no way for a hosting company to be certain it can achieve 100% uptime for the duration of a server’s life.
If we look at the opposite of uptime, we usually refer to downtime. Conversely, this is the amount of time that a server is offline. Downtime is a result of server maintenance, technical failures, or to the DDoS attacks on the hosting server.
When we look for a hosting service provider, your potential host must have an acceptable amount of uptime. Acceptable uptime is more than 99% or a downtime which is less than 1%. This is what we are paying for and this is what makes our visitors and customers happy.
An unusually high uptime may not always be a good thing. Uptime can be seen as a measure of computer operating system reliability and stability. This time indicates that a computer server can be left unattended without crashing, or needing to be rebooted for administrative or maintenance purposes. This means that long uptime can be indicative of negligence, because critical updates usually require regular reboots.
Hosting Reliability and Uptime
In web hosting, uptime is measured in terms of percentile. One standard for uptime is sometimes referred to as five 9s. This means that the computer is operational 99.999 percent of the time.
Though many service providers may claim that they aim for a 99.999% uptime, in reality there may be server restarts and planned and unplanned maintenance that the hosting provider may undertake within a certain time frame.
Web hosting clients must also remember that hosting server uptime only refer to the hosting provider server being powered on. It doesn’t account for network downtime. The actual downtime can be larger than the percentage guaranteed by the hosting service provider. Study closely the plans offered by the hosting provider. The server uptime is usually tied-up with the service level agreement, SLA. The SLAs sometimes include stipulations on refunds and reduced costs in the event that performance goals are not met.
Monitoring Hosting Server Uptime
Obviously, server uptime is a major element of our decision to choose a hosting provider. However, it would be physically impossible for us to verify claims of high uptime rates. You can get this information from many review sites that offered detailed analysis of the many top web providers. There are also several websites offering uptime tracking for online viewers interested in a web hosting service.
Of course we want to provide top quality service to our clients. A good part of our service requires a reliable website where we can provide the information and services that they require. To ensure that we achieve this goal of our company should look for better quality service from hosting providers that guarantee a 99.9% uptime percentage.
