This is the actual enterprise SLA. Color-based availability. My last job, CIO had monitor on wall, red = bad, green = good. We found the API endpoint and cached green. 6 hour outage, wall was green, nobody panicked.
I left that job. Now I work somewhere that checks numbers. Numbers are harder but I sleep better.
Current setup: Vultr London + Vultr Frankfurt, automated failover, measured 99.98% over 18 months. I report 99.95% to management. The gap is my job security.
I have a spreadsheet for this thread now. 14 data points, weighted by credibility, adjusted for "probably lying on RFP" factor.
Median designed: 99%
Median paid: 99.99%
Median actual: 99.5%
Median reported to boss: 99.999%
The gap between actual and reported is 0.499%. I call this the "enterprise markup."
I am stealing this for my next job interview. "What SLA do you guarantee?" "99.5% actual, 99.999% reported, with 0.499% enterprise markup."
Serious though, I used to sell hosting. The RFP process is designed to make both sides lie. Customer writes five nines because procurement template says so. Sales says yes because otherwise no deal. Then operations delivers whatever operations delivers. The contract is fiction, the invoice is real.
New here. Did anyone calculate cost per nine?
I did rough math:
- 99%: 5/month Vultr
- 99.9%: 20/month with better support
- 99.99%: 80/month managed
- 99.999%: 200/month plus consultant to explain why you don't have it
Each nine is 4x cost but only removes 10% of remaining downtime. This is logarithmic scam.
I am framing this and putting it in my office. Doug from New Jersey, bringing snacks and logarithmic scams since 2019.
Honest final answer: I say five nines, budget three, architect two, pray for one. The prayer is the only part that actually works.
