High Availability Hosting

[JPC-Greg]

Hhow many would be interested in a product like high availablity hosting?

Would you pay more for a service such as this ?


100% uptime SLA , more importantly actually delivering 100% uptime.

Heres a brief overview:
A set of server load balancers take all requests and direct the request to the appropriate server or service. The load balancer uses the server with the lowest load to always send out the data the fastest route possible. If one server dies the others clustered in that array pickup the workload instantiously until the down server is restored or replaced. If the servers all begin experiencing constant high loads we simply add one or more to that array/service to speed up responses.

http://www.jaguarpc.com/images/cluster.jpg

This should eliminate hardware problems as potential downtime issue.
When combined with our redundant data providers, routers, switches, your site and all services would truly be available 24/7 365 , 100% .

Who would be interested in something like this and what would you be willing to pay for it?

[lokki]

I'd be willing to consider it, but I have to spend some time thinking about the cost/benefit for my sites and those of my clients.

I have to be honest... with critical data, I'd expect 'five nines' reliability, if not in connection time, then in recovery and archiving. As it stands, I see slowdowns and network hiccups between 5 and 10 times per month, manifest as IMAP failures or slowdowns, extremely slow PHP responses, and the occasional 403 error. Most of these things are corrected within minutes, but I happen to see them during limited hours, so I can only imagine the actual degradation is some percentage worse.

However, to get that kind of guaranteed connection reliability teamed with already proven stellar support and service, I'd consider giving it a try, especially if I could have more confidence with selling to my customers.

On the other hand, I'd rather see an implemented hostGUI system that would centralize my account creation, billing, and support interface. The VPS solution you are working on is very, very close to what I want, but I am still thinking about how to best handle that kind of account, and how to set up a good billing system.

So, to answer your question, I'd be interested, but it seems to be a slightly-more-than-incremental upgrade to what we already expect as JagPC customers and as such, worth only a fractional increase as a reseller. Perhaps a 25% increase in current prices would be seriously tempting, but I wouldn't want to be forced to pay that or any more. Now we're talking tiered service in addition to tiered space, which makes things more confusing in general.

[JPC-Greg]

The software I mentioned in the main vps thread is coming along nicely. Of course work stopped on it during holidays but thats expected. It will help you manage your clients, billing, support, servers or vps, and a tad more. Its the first step in a long line of planned software.

Dont let questions like these, about high availability hosting, get in the way of thinking we've dropped other ongoing projects.

[lokki]

I understand, Greg. My point was to explain what I feel is priority, at least for my business. I would love the high reliability setup, as I've stated, but I've no idea how implementing that would impact other deliverables, so I stated a preference.

Taken by itself, I'd be willing to pay a slightly higher price for guaranteed uptime, but I'd expect some compensation (especially as a reseller) if something does go down. Of course, I realize that would imply some catastrophic failure, like the building blowing up...