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White Paper: Sparing for Availability and Sparing for Confidence – Use for Cloud Computing Services

Discover how sparing for confidence and sparing for availability are key strategies for ensuring high service availability in cloud computing. Learn more!

At a glance

  • ​Cloud computing services, Web hosting companies and Data Centers guarantee high service availability to the users (up to 99.999%).
  • While industry standards exist for tier I – IV data centers, following the standard does not guarantee the required availability.
  • Therefore, reliability and maintenance optimizations are crucial.

Sentences quoted from the article below.

​Cloud computing services, Web hosting companies and Data Centers guarantee high service availability to the users (up to 99.999%). While industry standards exist for tier I – IV data centers, following the standard does not guarantee the required availability. Therefore, reliability and maintenance optimizations are crucial. Standard spare optimization strategies include sparing for confidence (where the goal is to minimize the probability of a stock-out), and cost optimization (where spare and down-time costs are minimized). However, in the case of cloud services a different approach is needed: sparing for availability.

Attachment: data-center-spare-parts.pdf (763 KB) — download from the original post.

Frequently asked questions

Does meeting the data centre tier standard guarantee availability?
No. Standards exist for tier I to IV data centres, but following the standard does not guarantee the availability the service has promised — which is why reliability and maintenance optimisation matter on top of it.
How does sparing for availability differ from sparing for confidence?
Sparing for confidence minimises the probability of a stock-out, and cost optimisation minimises spare and downtime cost. Cloud services need a third approach, because what they have guaranteed the user is availability itself — up to 99.999%.

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Republished from https://www.bqr.com/blog/sparing-for-availability-and-sparing-for-confidence-use-for-cloud-computing-services. BQR Reliability Engineering Ltd.