Don't Let Planned Downtime Fool You

Ever hear someone brag, "Our app never fails! We have regular maintenance to keep it running smoothly." Sounds great, right? But hold on... Here's the thing: planned maintenance windows, where your app goes offline for a couple of hours each week, still count as downtime."

Let's do the math:

Site availability percentage = total hours in period - hours system is down / total hours in period hours in week = 7 days * 24 hours = 168 hours hours unavailable each week = 2 hours Site availability (no failure)= 168 hours - 2 hours / 168 hours = 98.8 % Site availability (no failure)= 98%

That means, even without a single unplanned outage, your app's maximum availability is 98.8%. That falls short of the coveted "two nines" standard (99% uptime).

planned downtime still disrupts your users. Whether it's expected or not, if your customers need your app and it's unavailable, they'll have a negative experience.

The bottom line: While regular maintenance is crucial, remember it impacts availability too. So, focus on minimizing downtime during maintenance and explore ways to offer even greater uptime for your users.

So, Everything's great... until it's not ?

Your app is working well, everything is running smoothly, and sales are going up. Things couldn't be better! Then, suddenly, the app crashes! But that's okay, right? It happens sometimes. You've had great uptime so far, so a little blip isn't a big deal.

Everyone forgets about it quickly – just a one-time thing.

But then it crashes again! Uh oh. Well, everything else is still okay, so no need to worry yet. It's probably just another one-off glitch.

Except... it keeps happening. Now people are starting to get nervous. What's going on?

Uh oh, trouble keeps happening!

Another outage! Now the boss is worried.
Customers are calling, asking what's going on.
The sales team is getting nervous too.

Things aren't as smooth as they used to be.

Your system, which used to work great all the time, is having more and more problems.
Everyone is starting to notice these outages.

Uh oh! This isn't good!

Things were going great, but now there are more and more outages. This is a problem because people rely on your app to work, and these interruptions are making them unhappy.

Keeping your app always up and running can be tricky. What can we do to fix this?

If your app isn't working as well as it used to, here are some ideas to make it more reliable and keep your customers happy!

How can we fix this?

There are some smart things we can do to keep our app running smoothly all the time. I've put together some ideas below to help us out!

Measure and track your current availability.
Automate your manual processes.
Automate your deployment processes.
Maintain and track all configurations in a management system.
Allow quick changes and experiments, with an easy rollback capability if a problem occurs.
Aim to continuously improve your applications and system
Keep on top of availability as a core issues on your application changes and grows. 💡