this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
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This website made me reconsider if 99.9999% SLA and always online is really that important for lots of websites. I used to self-host my own server in my own apartment, but gave up on that after my internet provider had their first major outage that lasted almost a week. Also I didn't want to worry about the fire hazard, or the server going down when I was traveling etc.

But a solar powered server seems interesting, if the batteries could be made fire safe.

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[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 61 points 6 hours ago (5 children)

I have never been a fan of anything above 3 nines of uptime even in a business situation.

Your business will not collapse because of 10 min of downtime a week, and if it does that is not technologies fault.

I don't even bother to track my home setup.

I found the GitHub employee! πŸ˜‰

[–] Ice@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

There are plentiful scenarios where 10 minutes of sequential downtime would be a critical issue. Say you're a telecoms or internet provider - even a one minute delay to a life-saving message can be enough for someone to die.

Furthermore, lots of things are interconnected now. Your business might be able to handle 10 minutes of downtime, but lets say my business relies on 12 different service providers like you, who each have 10 minutes of downtime during a week using your rationale. That could up being 2hrs of downtime each week.

[–] No_Maines_Land@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

99.999% is about 5 minutes and 16 seconds of downtime per year.

12 services down perfectly sequentially works out to 76 minutes per year, not 2hours per week.

Not saying there aren't applications where that can't be catastrophic, but you're scale is off for three 9 downtime.

[–] Zeoic@lemmy.world 1 points 53 minutes ago

His comment was not based on three nines, the OP is the one that brought up 10 min a week

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago

Yes, there are some that do, I should have said that. But the number of orgs that need extreme uptime is so small compared to business that think they do need it but really don't.

[–] djdarren@piefed.social 40 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

My home server is 100% up, because I never check it and that's how it works, right?

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 3 hours ago

I didn't turn it down, so it's obviously up.

[–] Koenig2005@feddit.org 12 points 3 hours ago

SchrΓΆdingers home server

[–] PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@anarchist.nexus 12 points 3 hours ago (3 children)

Your business will not collapse because of 10 min of downtime a week, and if it does that is not technologies fault.

Hospitals? Air traffic control? Power grid operators? Like these are exceptional businesses, but they're out there.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 7 points 2 hours ago

I agree, but the number of business that have actual need for extreme uptime is insignificant compared to the number of businesses that don't but think for some stupid reason they do.

[–] ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Many airports are closed at night.

Good point, but that's planned downtime.

[–] zurohki@aussie.zone 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

Those do actually go down. Hospitals have to be evacuated after an earthquake, airports force all aircraft to divert or the grid has the sort of outage that gets it's own Wikipedia page and needs to be black started.

Those do actually go down.

That's the point I'm making: when those examples go down unplanned, in particular hospitals and the power grid, in particular the examples you gave, those can be catastrophic events. I.e., if we ignore planned downtime, then these businesses really need five lines of reliability during the times they are expected to be up.

I agree with the overall point that the average business doesn't need five nines of availability, but I wanted to point out that there are definitely businesses that do.

I don't even bother to track my home setup

I host home assistant and if anything goes down I'll notice pretty fast.