Thursday, October 27, 2011

Looking At The Principal Differences Between Uptime And Availability In Terms Of Webhosting

By Benny Sexton


When it comes to the question of webhosting, a lot of people will want to know the difference between certain key words. Whether this is to do with server maintenance or if they are buying a domain name, the right questions need to be asked. Uptime and availability are two words which, although in concept they seem to be similar, they are not synonymous.

At its very basic level, uptime is known as the amount of time a machine can be left to keep running without experiencing downtime. Most of the time, the systems which it refers to are computers, operating systems and web servers. It can vary between different machine systems, but within computing it refers to how long one is able to keep a computer running unattended. After a certain period, it will eventually need to be rebooted or crash.

Administrative purposes is the usual reason why rebooting takes place as it helps keep the system clean and up to date. This is important as glitches can occasionally occur and therefore anything that could go wrong needs to be cleaned up, so to speak. A lot of people might realize that this is often the cause of certain websites, very occasionally, going down and not being available on the Internet for a certain time.

There is something else that is also known as high availability. Not exactly the same as the likes of uptime, confusion often occurs when speaking about it. Essentially it is the term that announces the span of time people are able to access system services. Be it the likes of watches or other machines including computers, all these can be factored into the meaning.

The two terms themselves are incredibly easy to confuse, but availability is different in the sense that it literally only means the time that a particular system is available for the users to access. "Downtime" is when it is unavailable. It is probably this second word which is something that causes so much confusion amongst people and leads them into thinking they are the same in web hosting.

For those running web services or any other kind of system, the likes of unavailability are normally used to repair problems and check over reports. Whilst this can be a pain and frustration for the users on the other end, usually they are done at times when there is a low frequency of usage. This is particularly important to do on popular servers.

In the fast-paced corporate world people are always going to be looking for the best kinds of services out there. Uptime can be good, but one of the main things people will look for is the likes of availability. People want everything now, and the quicker they can get it the better. Therefore, one of the most highly sought kinds of services are those with the best availability. Although sometimes difficult to find, new ways are being developed.

If people were to able to constantly access particular websites, then productivity is something which could theoretically be increased. The system itself, in being more efficient, will allow for greater profits to be generated.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment