Downtime-Whitepaper

Copyright 2013 IX Web Hosting
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Table of Contents
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3
6
9
10
12
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14
15
What is Downtime?
Causes of Downtime
› Hardware Failure
› Human Error
› Software Failure
› Security Breach
› Natural Disasters
Why Downtime Costs Money
› Business Disruption
› Lost Revenue
› Lost Productivity
› Recovery
› Damage to Reputation
Web DWeb Developers and Downtime
Prevention Against Downtime
Common Responses to Downtime
› Reaching out to Consultants
› Upgrading the Hosting Plan
› Switching Web Hosts
The Best Hosting Options for Preventing Downtime
ShaShared Hosting vs. Cloud Hosting
Summary
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© 1999 - 2013 IX Web Hosting. All rights reserved 1
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Downtime is a disastrous situation for any business or organization. Even small companies can lose as much
as $6,900/hr during downtime, and mid-sized organizations can lose up to $74,000/hr.
We put together this report to demonstrate how downtime can negatively aﬀect businesses, and what types
of hosting are best suited for preventing these types of outages.
This document will explore the causes of downtime, why it costs businesses money, who is at the greatest
risk, and how downtime can be prevented.
Mid-SizesBusiness - $74,000/h
r
SmallBusiness - $6,900/hr
Downtime
Loss
Foreword
What is Downtime?
Downtime is something 97% of companies suﬀer from at least once a year. It is a word used to describe the
state of unavailability experienced by websites, applications, and online services.
When a website is experiencing downtime, no contact information
from the site can be obtained, no new members can sign up, and
no online purchases can be made.
Similarly, when a business’s network or data center experiences
downtime, employees can’t share data, access files, and
sometimes, can’t even work at all.
For those
97% that report
downtime, there is
a hefty associated
cost.
webhosting

Causes of Downtime
According to the Quorum Disaster Recovery Report, Q1 2013, hardware failure is the number one cause of
downtime for small to mid-sized businesses.
Old devices, unmonitored heat levels, and improper cleaning can all lead to a piece (or multiple pieces) of
hardware breaking and bringing the server or system down. As such, hardware failures usually cause extended
periods of downtime, and are exceedingly stressful to IT technicians, who are tasked with finding and
replacing the faulty hardware as quickly as possible.
Even if these problems don’t cause downtime, they can still cause slowness and loading issues, which can be
just as costly. A study in 2010 showed that 57% of online customers will only wait a mere 3 seconds or
less before abandoning a website.
Overloads are diﬀicult to deal with, because without procuring additional hardware or resources, bringing the
website or service back online will yield the same problems, and, typically, resources such as these can’t be
obtained on a moment’s notice.
It’s important to note that resource overloads and malicious overloads
are not limited to hosting companies and servers. Personal computers
are also large failure points for business productivity. Virtualization of
the personal computer has been a response to downtime as a result of
hardware failure because virtualization limits the number of hardware
failure points (via personal computers) in a single business and
outsources the responsibility of hardware management to companies
whowho can focus on uptime.
Hardware Failure
Hardware (and software) failure can also
be caused by an overload. An overload
occurs when a resource is maxed out. If a
website gets a major spike in traﬀic, if a
database receives too many connections,
or if a hard drive runs out of storage
space, an overload will occur.
Resource
Overload
Other times, a malicious party will direct
a bunch of dummy connections to a
server, eating up all the bandwidth and
blocking anyone else from accessing it.
This type of bandwidth overload is called
a DoS (Denial of Service) attack.
Malicious
Overload
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Causes of Downtime, Cont.
Human error is the second most common cause of
downtime. If a worker installs a piece of hardware
improperly, incorrectly applies a patch, or accidentally
combines incompatible components can cause errors,
slowness, lost data, and downtime.
Even if you’ve hired an experienced team, IT technicians come from a wide variety of backgrounds and
educations, and while any given tech has a wealth of knowledge, there will always be a few things they may
not be familiar with, or something they might not catch. Human error tends to arise from systems
management departments such as System Administration, Network Administration, Security, and
Development.
SSetting up an IT network is a lot to manage, and there are several points of failure. Because of this, some
companies would rather not deal with the hassle, and instead opt to outsource their IT needs to a company
that handles their network and services for them.
Human Error
Software failures occur when a program fails, coding
becomes corrupted, or a new patch causes an unexpected
error. This accounts for approximately 18% of downtime
incidents.
In MaIn March of 2011, an auditor from Idaho State found
problems with a new Medicaid claims system that could
have cost millions of dollars. Design defects in the claim
handling process, along with a few other issues, resulted in
payment delays and faulty claim processing. The state
resorted to sending more than $100 million in advance
payments to providers while figuring out what the problem
was.was.
Quorum Disaster Recovery Report,
Q1 2013
Software Failure
webhosting

Causes of Downtime, Cont.
Security breaches (sometimes referred to as
‘hacks’) can occur through old versions of
CMS (ex. WordPress) or shopping cart
software, coding injections, or database
injections.
Unfortunately, some crashes or instances of downtime aren’t purely accidental. Security breaches consist of a
foreign party, either human or automated, that breaks into a website or server and either injects malicious
code or removes needed code in order to disable the site or service.
Security Breaches
5% of the time, an outage has nothing to with the website, software,
or hardware. “For instance” in natural disaster area kind of
amateurish, if the area that houses the servers is hit with a natural
disaster, such as a tornado or earthquake, the building may lose
power. No power means no server, which means no service.
NaNatural disasters aren’t a huge factor when planning for
downtime, but they are a big enough risk that they
shouldn’t be completely overlooked.
Even extreme natural disasters do not always equal downtime, however. Some web hosting companies have
taken substantial failovers in place to handle unexpected power outages. Power generators and multiple data
center locations are two things that make a large diﬀerence to the impact natural disasters can have on
uptime.
Natural Disasters
webhosting

Why Downtime Costs Money
Computed from 41 benchmarked data centers
Average cost of unplanned data center outages for nine categories
If a business is using a site or service that they depend on, and that service fails, the business is essentially
paralyzed until the issue is fixed. All interactions between customers and other businesses will cease,
communications will be at a standstill, production will slow down or stop, and quotas will be missed. Lost
wages, overtime, and remedial labor all add up during downtime. And, even after the issue is fixed, the
business has to catch up, since they’ll be trying to recover lost time and sales.
A loss of monA loss of money due to business disruption may actually be a threat to the company as a whole. A study by The
Via Group reported that 3 out of 5 businesses that experience a major IT outage will be completely out of
business in 5 years.
These dramatic findings might have to do with a variety of factors:
Companies that are not technologically sophisticated tend to be those that experience major
outages, and technological sophistication is related to longevity.
Companies that are not technologically prepared for downtime would tend to be unprepared for
other risks related to emergency planning, disaster recovery, and business continuity. For example,
a company not prepared for downtime may just as likely have limiting issues related to cash flow,
IT knowledge, resource cross-training, succession planning, etc.
›
›
Business Disruption
webhosting
$ $40,000 $80,000 $120,000 $160,000 $200,000
The Ponemon Group, 2011
$179,827
$118,080
$96,226
$42,530
$22,347
$20,884
$9,537
$9,063
$7,008
Business disruption
Lost revenue
End-user productivity
IT productivity
Detection
Recovery
Ex-post activitiesEx-post activities
Equipment costs
Third parties

Why Downtime Costs Money, Cont.
Retail websites are hit hard by downtime. If a website designed to sell a product experiences an outage, no
purchases can be made. Even if a company doesn’t use their website to sell anything, when people can’t
locate the website to check on hours, location, or get a phone number, the company is losing potential
customers.
Lost Revenue
For companies that use a data center to run their day-to-day activities, downtime potentially means no
incoming emails, no data sharing between employees, and no access to files needed for daily business
functions. If a business uses virtual desktops to run their employees’ computers, and the server providing the
desktop crashes, productivity grinds to a halt, and employees are essentially being paid to do nothing.
Lost Productivity
The core cause of the problem will also need to be fixed, which will cost money as well. Whether the problem is
coding, patching, hardware repairs, or hardware replacement, rectifying the issue and making sure it doesn't
happen again will require some funds.
A study by the Ponemon Institute shows what companies did in response to downtime. Each of these tasks
takes time, resources, and manpower, all of which eventually translates into money. The %’s add up to more
than 100 because some companies have to take more than one of these precautions:
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70%
60%
56%
51%
51%
26%
19%
13%
Repair IT or Infrastructure equipment
Replace IT or Infrastructure equipment
Contact equipment vendors for support
Purchase new IT or Infrastructure equipment
Hire outside experts to remediate the problem
Implement/Improve monitoring capabilities
Conduct a data center audit or assesmentConduct a data center audit or assesment
Recovery
webhosting

Why Downtime Costs Money, Cont.
News of a website’s downtime and perceived undependability can spread across blogs and social media,
killing a business’s reputation and costing them customers. A report by Convergys showed that it actually only
takes 1 negative tweet to lose about 30 customers.
Additionally, if Google happens to be indexing while a site is down, it can cost the business dearly. 404 - Not
Found errors are what typically are displayed when a site is down, and they are one of the worst infractions
when it comes to Google search rankings. Even dropping 1 or 2 positions in the rankings can cost a business
visitors and potential sales.
This gThis graph from seochat.com shows the relation between Google rank and click through percentages. Notice
that the click-throughs drop oﬀ very sharply as Google rank decreases:
[The yearly cost to companies that experience] both downtime and subsequent damage to their reputation
can be substantial. On average, small businesses can lose $26k/yr, mid sized businesses can lose
$881k/yr, and large businesses can lose $2.7 million/yr.
Damage to Reputation
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%30%
20%
10%
0%
Correlation between Google Ranking Positions
and %CTR (Click Thru Rate)
Position in Google
y = 0.6993x
R = 0.5274
2
.12014
Average
position
CTR
1
1
2
2
2
2
22
3
3
3
3
3
3
33
4
4
4
4
4
5
55
5
5
5
5
5
6
66
6
6
6
7
7
7
88
8
9
9
9
10
43%
61%
3%
43%
78%
75%2
44%44%
28%
6%
22%
13%
33%
24%
35%35%
32%
9%
20%
11%
16%
10%
21%21%
20%
26%
13%
3%
7%
6%
9%9%
9%
5%
8%
5%
8%
1%
6%6%
9%
6%
1%
13%
5%
webhosting

Web Developers and Downtime
Web developers and designers have to be particularly wary of outages when picking a hosting plan and setting
up their customers’ sites. Even if a developer isn’t hosting anything themselves, their clients will hold them
responsible for their sites’ well-being.
If a web developer hosts all of their clients’ sites in one place, and the hosting service suﬀers downtime,
so does every one of his/her clients. So, not only does the developer lose money and reputation, but their
clients’ businesses may also be subject to losing in revenue, productivity, and reputation. It's a risk that can
multiply quickly and must be carefully planned for.
Web dWeb developers who may try to solve this situation by hosting their customers across multiple web hosts will
find such a solution to be not only expensive but extremely diﬀicult to maintain. Not only that, but each
additional web host can introduce additional points of failure as well.
webhosting

Prevention Against Downtime
Preventing just one crash event can save a mid-sized company up to
$250k/year. Given these numbers, preventing downtime should be
one of the top priorities for any business. And, while there is no
cure-all solution, there are a few factors can be considered that will
drastically decrease the chances of experiencing an outage.
Resources need to be kept in check to prevent slowdowns
and overloads. If a business notices that web traffic or the
need for file storage is increasing, steps must be taken to
make sure the hosting plan can handle it.
A business should actively mA business should actively measure web traffic and
bandwidth usage and chart it to make intelligent predictions
about trends and temporal fluctuations. And, a business
should always have more space and bandwidth than they
need so the site can handle spikes in web traffic.
1. Monitor Resources
WEB TRAFFIC
Businesses should have their IT needs covered 24/7 to avoid any issue that occurs outside of the usual hours of
operation. This staff will update software, maintain server firewalls, monitor for DoS attacks and hacker
activity, and keep an eye on hardware. After an internal survey, IX Web Hosting has found that 7 people is the
minimum needed for 24/7 coverage, but more should be considered to cover unexpected absences, sick time
and vacation days.
2. Adequate Staffing
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webhosting
Having a backup system in place to continue working when the primary system goes down is another line of
defense. This is known as redundancy. Power supplies, hard drives, and bandwidth can all be redundant, and
will allow sites and applications to function even during technical issues.
4. Redundancy
If resources are running low, it may take some time to increase them. During this time, a business’ website or
services can experience slowness or go down altogether. In order to prevent this, a scalable hosting plan is the
best option. That is, a plan that allows additional resources to be acquired as needed with minimum wait
time.
5. Scalable Resources
Businesses should be open to asking experts for help, as well. Bringing in
an outside perspective can often be more objective in observing those
processes that go on day in, day out. Simply having a "system technician"
on hand for day-to-day issues isn't enough to prevent or shorten the span
of downtime incidents for serious businesses
3. Expert Assistance
Prevention Against Downtime, Cont.

Common Responses to Downtime
As we mentioned, it’s important that businesses be willing to seek an external perspective on how their
business is run. In fact, approximately 71% of companies use third party experts for assistance in
avoiding downtime.
Reaching out to Consultants
If a customer feels that their site is growing, and they want to make sure that they don’t expend all of their
resources, sometimes they will upgrade to a more feature-rich plan with their web host. The issue with this
approach is that it doesn’t always fix the problem. Sure, if you need more space, and an upgraded plan gives
you more space, that’s fine. But if your site is getting slower because it’s getting more popular, a more
expensive plan doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be getting more bandwidth or processing power. Essentially,
throwing money at the problem isn’t a cure-all.
Upgrading the Hosting Plan
Customers dissatisfied with the speed and performance of their sites will often pack up and move to a diﬀerent
web host in search of higher quality hosting. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always work, as we explain below.
Switching Web Hosts
webhosting

The Best Hosting Options for Preventing Downtime
Many hosting customers who leave reviews for various hosting companies appear to believe that choosing the
right host can limit their exposure to downtime. There is significant pressure put on the reputation of hosting
companies to provide steady uptime and snappy service. Based on what’s been explored here, resources and
staﬀing seem to be at the core of Downtime Prevention, but at the core of every hosting company is a fairly
standard set of tools that allow them to deliver their service. There is not much variation in hardware,
provisioning, software, or staﬀing amongst the top companies.
In the end, regardless of brand, shared hosting is pretty standard across the board. The bottom line is, if
downtime prevention is at the top of your list of hosting requirements, the solution isn’t picking the right
brand, but rather, picking the right type of hosting.
Are there brands that are better in the uptime department?
Web Hosting Hub
Web Hosting Pad
IX Web Hosting
Host Excellence
99.99% uptime
Inmotion Hosting
Fat Cow
99.95% uptime
99.27% uptime
99.94% uptime
99.36% uptime
98.52% uptime
99.17% uptime
99.39% uptime
99.53% uptime
97.33% uptime
3.88 wk. hours down
13.80 wk. hours down
1.56 wk. hours down
4.57 wk. hours down
4.00 wk. hours down
19.40 wk. hours down
3.80 wk. hours down
2.42 wk. hours down
1.08 wk. hours down
7.60 wk. hours down
Host Monster
Green Geeks
Just Host
Host Gator
Hosting Company Real Uptime Percent/Hours
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Shared Hosting vs. Cloud Hosting
Because nearly all shared hosting products are essentially the same, tackling potential downtime issues
requires selecting a type of hosting that is specifically designed to counter most, if not all possible downtime
scenarios. For instance, this chart compares the features and downtime prevention measures of shared hosting
and Cloud hosting:
Shared hosting is by far the most popular kind of hosting out there, but, it’s lacking in several significant areas
that can lead to more downtime. Shared hosting’s biggest issue is that the resources (computing power, space,
bandwidth, etc) are stretched between hundreds of customers. This leads to fluctuating performances and, at
times, unstable service. Because a shared hosting machine houses many customers, they can affect each other
depending on how many resources they use. It only takes one customer overloading the server to cause all
other customers on that server to experience slowness and downtime.
BeBecause of this, business owners and organization leaders can’t risk hosting websites or basing resources on
shared hosting accounts. Since there is no influence over what the other customers do, it’s too unpredictable
when it comes to service levels and uptime. This is illustrated by the 99.999% uptime of Cloud vs the 99.9%
uptime of Shared, for example. The difference between these numbers equates to a difference of about
5 hours/year of downtime costs. Multiply that by the $6900/hr lost during downtime by just a small
business, and the advantages of Cloud uptime start to stack up.
Cloud pCloud provides the scalability, redundancy, user control and resources that make it the number one choice for
online businesses. In fact, the majority of top-of-their-industry businesses already use Cloud or some other
kind of fault-tolerant servers for their critical applications.
webhosting
Scalable
Uptime
Redundant
Backups
Guarantee
Physical Resources
Yes
Up to 99.999%
Yes
Customer has
Full Control
Contracted Service
LLevel Agreement
Dedicated
No
Up to 99.9% (Variable)
No
Not Guaranteed
Standard
Terms of Service
ShaShared
Cloud Hosting Shared Hosting

Summary
Downtime should be treated as a major risk factor for any online business, and is something that should be
taken into careful consideration when picking a hosting service, or hosting plan. While plans that guard against
downtime may be more expensive at first, the dependability and peace of mind over the long run make the
initial expense more than worth it.
Works Cited
Aberdeen Group - Four Steps to Setting the Right Budget for Downtime Prevention, April 2012
http://www.stratus.com/~/media/Stratus/Files/Library/AnalystReports/Aberdeen-4-Steps-Budget-Downtime.pdf
Continuity Central - The Top Causes of Downtime Explored, February 11th, 2013
http://www.continuitycentral.com/news06645.html
Quorum Disaster Recovery Report, Q1 2013
http://wwhttp://www.inquirere.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/National-Survey-on-Data-Center-Outages.pdf
PhoCusWright Inc. (on behalf of Akamai Technologies, Inc.) - Consumer Response to Travel Site Performance, June
14th, 2010
http://www.akamai.com/html/about/press/releases/2010/press_061410.html
PC World - 10 Biggest ERP Software Failures of 2011, Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service, Dec 20, 2011
http://www.pcworld.com/article/246647/10_biggest_erp_software_failures_of_2011.html
Emerson Network Power - Understanding the cost of Data Center Downtime
http:/http://emersonnetworkpower.com/en-US/Brands/Liebert/Documents/White%20Papers/data-center-uptime_24661-
R05-11.pdf
SEO Chat - Google Ranking Positions and %CTR: Estimating Search Engine Visitors, December 20, 2010
http://www.seochat.com/c/a/google-optimization-help/google-ranking-positions-and-ctr-estimating-search-engine-
visitors/
Web Hosting Watch - Best Web Hosting Services 2013, March 20th, 2013
http://webhostingw.com/
StStratus Technologies - The Cost of Critical Application Failure
http://go.stratus.com/l/3302/2012-07-10/2bcfrx?Ref=GOOGLEPPC&pi_ad_id=32341208256
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