It is 2013 and we have finally reached the stage where the proverbial five “9s” of projected availability are simply not enough (~5 minutes of downtime per year). And while there are some who even claim they are pushing six 9s, perhaps they are just pushing something else. Nonetheless, it is clear that in our internet-driven economy we can no longer tolerate any downtime.
In the world of mission-critical computing, the term data center and its implied level of availability has always referred to the physical facility and its power and cooling infrastructure. With all the marketing hype of the cloud, what constitutes a data center may be up for re-examination.