- What is your SLA?
We have a 99.9% uptime SLA which is very typical for a dedicated server. If you look at the SLA offered by various “service providers” you will find these numbers vary all over the place from 3 “9′s” which is 99.9% to some that offer 5 “9′s” (99.999%)In order to get an SLA higher than 99.9% you need to be running multiple server in multiple data centers. Even with multiple instances in multiple service centers it is hard to get an SLA higher than 99.95% and companies that offer 5 “9′s” are typically just throwing out numbers. To put this in perspective, Microsoft and Amazon Cloud offering both have a 99.95% SLA. This only applies with multiple instances of the service in separate locations.
- What do the SLA numbers really mean?
An SLA of 99.95% means that over any 365 consecutive days your service should be up for 99.95% of the time. This typically does not include scheduled maintenance, such as installed operating system updates or hardware maintenance. It also does not include customer caused issues, such as broken pages, server misconfiguration.
Another way of looking at the 99.95% is that over the last 365 days your service could be down for 0.05% of the time. If there are 525600 minutes in a year 0.05% of 525600 = 262.8 minutes of possible down time during any 365 day period. The question then becomes what 262.8 minutes do you want to be down? Unfortunately Murphy has declared a law that says it will always be at the worst possible moment. We strive very hard to prevent any downtime at all and have an excellent reputation for uptime.
- Is my virtual server PCI compliant?
PCI compliance is a complex topic with a changing target. Being compliant includes many areas of operation not just the hosting platform, but also the applications you are using to handle your e-commerce and the way you store, access and process credit cards. While we cannot help you with all of these items we can assist you in making sure your Linux Virtual Server passes the server scan which your credit card processing service may require. Typically this involves taking the report from an initial scan and locking down the server.
- How long have you been in business?
We started offering Virtual Servers in 1997 based on FreeBSD an operating system similar to Linux as active-server.com. That site is still active and offers the same Linux Virtual Servers as we do here.
- Where are the servers located?
We host our virtual servers in one of two Network Operations Centers (NOCs) in the United States, one is located in Virginia the other is located in California. Both NOCs are run by our partner, NTT Communications. We typically setup your Linux Virtual Server in the NOC closest to your location.
