Jason Cohen of WP Engine on What 100% Uptime Means

WP Engine

There’s an older blog post (circa 2013) by WP Engine founder Jason Cohen titled Do You Have 100% Uptime? which discusses the challenges (technical and cost) of what 100% web services / web site uptime really means.

Cohen points to examples of 4 well known WordPress specific hosting companies as well as major services like Gmail, Facebook, and Twitter all experience downtime over the course of a 10 day period.

A quote from the post:

Every “9” you add to uptime (e.g. 99%, 99.9%, 99.99%) is not only an order of magnitude more uptime, it’s often a multiple more complex and expensive. At some point, trying to eliminate a few minutes of downtime now and then means doubling or tripling the cost of the service.

It’s a great read on the challenges and compromises an organization needs to make when chasing the elusive (and impossible) 100% uptime target. Well worth checking out.

Post written by Ed Reckers

Founder and lead web development consultant at Red Bridge Internet : San Francisco WordPress Developers and Consultants.

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