Five Nines is a term for describing the Availability of a service or system at 99.999% uptime. Realizing there are 525,960 minutes in a year, a system that truly provides 99.999% (aka Five Nines) uptime would only be down/unavailable for a total of about 5.35 minutes the entire year. Most experts deem that almost impossible to guarantee.

How do you get 99.999% uptime from your system? Through proper design and architecture. Building in High Availability options is one way to control the contributing factors. High Availability (HA) is an IT term for systems that are built to withstand failure. Many contributing factors go into the design of an HA system. One must consider hardware, software, infrastructure, power, vendor supplied circuits, and the like.

So, when you hear the term “five nines”, can you be so sure? “It’s cloud, it must be five nines!” Not true. Just because a solution is in the cloud doesn’t even imply high availability. There are some very reliable and quite appropriate cloud solutions, depending on your business needs. That doesn’t guarantee you five nines uptime. In fact, quite the contrary. Having more control over the design and architecture of your system can, in many cases, give you greater control over the resiliency and ability to achieve that High Availability and 99.999% uptime that is critical to your business.

We all have strengths. Your company may provide web-based services, medical solutions, financial services, or brick and mortar retail products. Our business designs, installs and maintains critical business communication solutions that help strengthen your business.

Call the experts at AVDS and make sure you are asking all the right questions. We don’t just sell products. We design, install, and maintain solutions. By doing so, we build relationships.

Written by:
Brian Barnett
Director of Sales & Marketing, Engineer, Photographer, Storyteller, Family Man…
www.avds.com