Part 2: The Math & the killer(s) — Building a 5–nines (99.999%) Available Platform

Thank you for coming back to read Part 2. We discussed the context and set up for the series in Part 1.

We will discuss some of the theory and math behind 5-nines, what does it take on a paper to build one, the Achilles heel, and the laws of physics that are going to stop you from building such a platform.

Photo by Victor on Unsplash

To build a 5-nines platform, your organization needs to be, rich, crazy enough to commit to building one, and detail-oriented. It is an ‘AND’ not ‘OR’. Very few organizations that have to manage systemic risk for the whole country or industry will build one (on paper, anyway).

The Math

We will have to learn to build one — because, it will help us sort our weaknesses, even if we can achieve 4-nines or 3-nines.

Let me quickly recap, why each 9 or each ‘half-nine’ (technically 0.3, not half) is so hard. It is nX complexity at each step.

Stepwise complexity

Most often to build a highly available platform, on paper, we resort to clustering and networking. The fundamentals are in probability and binomial distribution.