Service Level Agreement

PON · 13 Nov 2005, 11:52 AM

Suggestion for Fastmail: provide Service Level Agreements

I run a Microsoft Exchange mail system for a scientific research organization and have done for many years. Continuous uptime for email is mission critical and any unplanned downtime can be very stressful. Not too long ago I saw headlines saying "Most IT Managers consider a week's email outage as stressful as a divorce". I could identify with this, having had a 5 day outage start within hours of taking my current job some years ago. It was a baptism of fire, also involving a failed raid array, with restores that took 22 hours each (the first didn't work). Ever since I have tried very hard to protect against anything like that happening again. Mail is now on synchronously mirrored SAN storage in two data centers each of which has independent Internet links with traffic failover etc. I'm working on further improvements (e.g., virtual servers for better disaster recovery). In 2006 I aim, finally, to get to the point of simulating disasters and practising putting business continuity plans (BCP) into effect (not only for email).

BCP planning involves assessments of maximum tolerable downtime. As with many things in life, higher levels of assured availability can be secured at higher cost.

To date Fastmail has focused on providing more and better features than competitors. No mail service provider I know of provides service level guarantees. I, and I'm sure many others, would be prepared to pay for those and to pay more for higher levels of service.

rmns2bseen · 13 Nov 2005, 02:32 PM

PON, this isn't directed at you; you have some interesting things to say and the more technologically talented can address technical details. But during this outage I've seen tirades along the lines of "This is costing me xxxxxx dollars! I depend on my email for my livelihood!" Folks, if that's the case, don't you think it might be wiser to spend a little more than $39.95 a year to ensure a virtually uninterrupted flow of email--perhaps go with a company that specializes in meeting the needs of businesses, or setting up your own server? I've had an account with FM for a long while now, over four years; I've always been under the impression that it's primarily for personal email. I don't recall ever seeing on the home page or in the service levels table anything along the lines of "we are your solution for all your business communication needs". And even a technological idiot such as myself knows that whatever service one is with, it's always wise to have a contingency plan.

And that's my two-cents' worth.

PON · 13 Nov 2005, 03:31 PM

My comments were intended to be constructive. Like you I thought some of the tirades were a little overdone. However, asking ordinary users to have contingency plans is, I think, not realistic. Yes, it's possible for people to go and change either MX records or their DNS records -- if they have domains -- but they shouldn't ordinarily need to do so.

Most Fastmail users may indeed use Fastmail for personal mail but messagingengine.com (a skinnable version of Fastmail) has been made available/marketed for business use. It's the same technology. If I were a business subscriber I'd want to see a service level agreement as a matter of routine.

Why not provide the same to the private individual willing to pay for the service?

**Shelded** · 13 Nov 2005, 03:45 PM

You're so right about that personal mail perception. Although some of us can trust it more than the Exchange mail at the office, this is personal mail. The messagingengine business interface never seems to have gotten off the ground. So I'm not willing to pay a lot more for the kind of hardware synch that PON recommends. Not because it isn't important, but because I can tolerate occasional downtime by using my own backup methods. I think anyone who uses FM without having an entire local backup of their own has not been on the internet long enough to have learned. Anyone who uses FM without having their own $8/yr domain should not complain about FM's failure to take precautions, because redirection is the fastest "failover" process I have and anyone can have a Yahoo or Gmail account to collect the emergency mail in.

**Shelded** · 13 Nov 2005, 03:48 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by PON
Why not provide the same to the private individual willing to pay for the service?

Sure, why not? Do we know that it isn't already in effect?

FMRocks · 13 Nov 2005, 03:55 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by rmns2bseen
And that's my two-cents' worth.

Well, some of us are involved in volunteer community work or organization. Whether it's a campaign by local citizens to save a local library, to prevent an after school center from closing, or a group of students of an online university or course, there is no denying the fact that email can be mission critical without making someone actual green cash. And someone might just be looking for a job, a time when they, presumably are not flushed with cash to have a bunch of other paid accounts. For that person too, email is critical. Point is, you don't have to positively profiting from your email in order to be severly impacted when it goes down for 3 days. I agree that people who plan to make money off of email should make their own contingency plans and so forth. But there are more people affected than them.

rthomas · 13 Nov 2005, 06:08 PM

All your points are interesting but in my opinion the base of the problem is how SMTP works.
- There is no guarantee email is delivered
- Badly managed attachment (big one in particular)
- You need to build very complex and expensive system to make email reliable (uptime and response time)
- SPAM and Viruses

I think the future of email is system like Groove with
- P2P
- autosync of data with one or more server (your emails)
- Authorized sender list (calling card mechanism)
- Encryption

Perhaps it's time to reconsider SMTP

Remi

PON · 13 Nov 2005, 06:47 PM

Agree about SMTP.

However, the real problem was the protracted recovery time, not the fact that there was a failure. Failures can be expected.

Predictable recovery time is desirable. I would be happy to pay more for a more reliable service.

> do we know that it's not already in effect?

It's not as far as I know.

If Fastmail were to offer a premium service with guaranteed recovery times I would subscribe. I give my own users (1,000+) 100Mb of bulletproof mail storage from the market leading vendor in external storage. Trying to do this with 2Gb mailboxes would be too costly (who really has 2Gb worth of email that's equally important?). There's a clear tradeoff between capacity and recovery time.

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 supports getting user accounts back online fast even if a database (storage group) is corrupted --so that incoming mail can be delivered and outgoing mail sent even as data are being recovered from backup. This doesn't seem to be an option with Fastmail.

13 Nov 2005, 11:52 AM	#1
PON Essential Contributor Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Wicklow, Ireland Posts: 449	Service Level Agreement Suggestion for Fastmail: provide Service Level Agreements I run a Microsoft Exchange mail system for a scientific research organization and have done for many years. Continuous uptime for email is mission critical and any unplanned downtime can be very stressful. Not too long ago I saw headlines saying "Most IT Managers consider a week's email outage as stressful as a divorce". I could identify with this, having had a 5 day outage start within hours of taking my current job some years ago. It was a baptism of fire, also involving a failed raid array, with restores that took 22 hours each (the first didn't work). Ever since I have tried very hard to protect against anything like that happening again. Mail is now on synchronously mirrored SAN storage in two data centers each of which has independent Internet links with traffic failover etc. I'm working on further improvements (e.g., virtual servers for better disaster recovery). In 2006 I aim, finally, to get to the point of simulating disasters and practising putting business continuity plans (BCP) into effect (not only for email). BCP planning involves assessments of maximum tolerable downtime. As with many things in life, higher levels of assured availability can be secured at higher cost. To date Fastmail has focused on providing more and better features than competitors. No mail service provider I know of provides service level guarantees. I, and I'm sure many others, would be prepared to pay for those and to pay more for higher levels of service.

13 Nov 2005, 03:45 PM	#4
Shelded Moderator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: USA Northwest Posts: 3,849	rmns2bseen You're so right about that personal mail perception. Although some of us can trust it more than the Exchange mail at the office, this is personal mail. The messagingengine business interface never seems to have gotten off the ground. So I'm not willing to pay a lot more for the kind of hardware synch that PON recommends. Not because it isn't important, but because I can tolerate occasional downtime by using my own backup methods. I think anyone who uses FM without having an entire local backup of their own has not been on the internet long enough to have learned. Anyone who uses FM without having their own $8/yr domain should not complain about FM's failure to take precautions, because redirection is the fastest "failover" process I have and anyone can have a Yahoo or Gmail account to collect the emergency mail in.

13 Nov 2005, 06:08 PM	#7
rthomas Member Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Lille, France Posts: 37	SMTP is poor All your points are interesting but in my opinion the base of the problem is how SMTP works. - There is no guarantee email is delivered - Badly managed attachment (big one in particular) - You need to build very complex and expensive system to make email reliable (uptime and response time) - SPAM and Viruses I think the future of email is system like Groove with - P2P - autosync of data with one or more server (your emails) - Authorized sender list (calling card mechanism) - Encryption Perhaps it's time to reconsider SMTP Remi

13 Nov 2005, 02:32 PM	#2
rmns2bseen Master of the @ Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: USA Posts: 1,426	PON, this isn't directed at you; you have some interesting things to say and the more technologically talented can address technical details. But during this outage I've seen tirades along the lines of "This is costing me xxxxxx dollars! I depend on my email for my livelihood!" Folks, if that's the case, don't you think it might be wiser to spend a little more than $39.95 a year to ensure a virtually uninterrupted flow of email--perhaps go with a company that specializes in meeting the needs of businesses, or setting up your own server? I've had an account with FM for a long while now, over four years; I've always been under the impression that it's primarily for personal email. I don't recall ever seeing on the home page or in the service levels table anything along the lines of "we are your solution for all your business communication needs". And even a technological idiot such as myself knows that whatever service one is with, it's always wise to have a contingency plan. And that's my two-cents' worth.

13 Nov 2005, 03:31 PM	#3
PON Essential Contributor Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Wicklow, Ireland Posts: 449	My comments were intended to be constructive. Like you I thought some of the tirades were a little overdone. However, asking ordinary users to have contingency plans is, I think, not realistic. Yes, it's possible for people to go and change either MX records or their DNS records -- if they have domains -- but they shouldn't ordinarily need to do so. Most Fastmail users may indeed use Fastmail for personal mail but messagingengine.com (a skinnable version of Fastmail) has been made available/marketed for business use. It's the same technology. If I were a business subscriber I'd want to see a service level agreement as a matter of routine. Why not provide the same to the private individual willing to pay for the service?

13 Nov 2005, 06:47 PM	#8
PON Essential Contributor Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Wicklow, Ireland Posts: 449	Agree about SMTP. However, the real problem was the protracted recovery time, not the fact that there was a failure. Failures can be expected. Predictable recovery time is desirable. I would be happy to pay more for a more reliable service. > do we know that it's not already in effect? It's not as far as I know. If Fastmail were to offer a premium service with guaranteed recovery times I would subscribe. I give my own users (1,000+) 100Mb of bulletproof mail storage from the market leading vendor in external storage. Trying to do this with 2Gb mailboxes would be too costly (who really has 2Gb worth of email that's equally important?). There's a clear tradeoff between capacity and recovery time. Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 supports getting user accounts back online fast even if a database (storage group) is corrupted --so that incoming mail can be delivered and outgoing mail sent even as data are being recovered from backup. This doesn't seem to be an option with Fastmail.