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Gmail: Ultra-Reliable, Not Reliable Enough
By Bizbox
We are huge fans of cloud computing: the use of software that lets you do your business in the "cloud," such that your data exist (securely, ideally!) not on relatively inaccessible hardware but on the Internet--in the "cloud"--in a place where those who you want to access it can. It lets you, the entrepreneur, run your business more cheaply and bring geographically disparate people together on a single project more easily; it can even make your business doings more secure. Numerous folk have identified cloud computing as the future. (Even Microsoft's getting in on the action!)
The most basic example of a cloud computing software is Google's email server, Gmail--this is why we love it so much, along with Google's attendant suite of cloud computing applications such as Google Docs (a word processor), Google Calendar (a scheduler), and Google Reader (an RSS device)--your personalized versions of which all can be shared among as many people as you would like.
As we've said, one concern with cloud computing is the security, which can be scary. Another concern, however, is that the administrator of the cloud can, whether through error or deliberate decision, make the cloud inaccesible to you (or to everyone) on a whim. We've written before about the awful experience that is--gasp!--losing access to your Gmail. So you can perhaps understand why, when TechCrunch reports that Google insists Gmail and its other applications have 99.9% availability--in other words, you can't access them for a cumulative total of about 15 minutes per month --we're left not thrilled at this exceptional record but dreading that .1%.
The post refers to the legendary August Outage, during which all users lost Gmail access for about two hours. (You remember this, right? We know we do.) Apparently, two weeks ago there was another outage that affected far fewer but lasted over a day (shudder). Hence Google's new 99.9% guarantee, extended to Gmail and the rest of its cloud apps. (Although those 15 minutes per month are not necessarily consecutive, and if experience dictates, most of those "outages" last no more than about twenty seconds.)
We should note--Google certainly does--that Gmail has a fraction of the downtime of the email servers of competitors GroupWise, Lotus, and Exchange, all of whom unlike Google have planned downtime in addition to unplanned downtime. Gmail is has one-fourth just the unplanned downtime of Exchange, which is the mail program of this small company.
Still, as TechCrunch puts it: "99.9 percent reliability is nice. But that is not even phone-company reliable. Get back to us when you get to 99.999 percent." Amen.
Comments (0)November 3, 2008 9:16 AM
