Jonathan Blow

Watch the talk

Okay

@Conaw this talk resonates with me deeply

5 9s though, may we’ll be at odds with “ideal complexity” vs “actual complexity” trade off described in the talk…. Would love to chat about it sometime if you free

But, nobody in this conversation is making up the phrase "five nines". That used to be a standard guarantee of reliability in the tech industry, that products achieved, and that everyone knew what it meant, in the 90s and 2000s. The fact that this has been forgotten is shocking.

(Four nines was probably more common, but the web stuff we have today is very far from four nines. 5 9s is about 2 minutes a year total downtime, and 4 9s is about 20 minutes.)

5 9s is just shy of 6min, and 4 is around 50min. I completely agree More teams should be using 9s as a way of budgeting and planning. And knowingly choose a appropriate set of trade offs. Rather then today’s #yolo approach.

But very few services can justify the costs associated with 5 or even 4 9s, especially if they are state full and need to scale… At several places I’ve worked, we have used the above to calculate tolerable losses, and set appropriate goals and budgets to attain.