Reliability & SLAs

MTBF, MTTR, MTTF, SLAs, SLOs, error budgets, and how to measure service reliability.

Reliability metrics like MTBF, MTTR, and MTTF quantify how well your systems perform. SLAs and SLOs set the targets. These articles explain the key metrics, how to calculate them, and how to use them to drive operational improvements.

For a comprehensive overview, see our Understanding Uptime SLAs and Availability.

MTBF Explained: Mean Time Between Failures for Non-Engineers

What MTBF means in plain English -- the formula, what a good MTBF looks like, common misconceptions, and how to improve reliability for your website or service.

MTTR Explained: Mean Time to Recovery and Why It Matters

What MTTR means, how to calculate it, why recovery speed matters more than preventing every failure, and how monitoring dramatically reduces your MTTR.

MTTF Explained: Mean Time to Failure for Non-Engineers

What MTTF means, how it differs from MTBF, the formula, and why it matters for your website's reliability planning.

MTTA & MTTD Explained: Mean Time to Acknowledge and Detect

What MTTA and MTTD mean, why detection and acknowledgment speed matter more than you think, and how to improve both metrics.

Incident Response Metrics That Actually Matter

The key metrics for measuring incident response -- MTTD, MTTA, MTTR, and more. Which ones to track and which to ignore.

SLI vs SLO vs SLA: Understanding the Differences

The differences between SLIs, SLOs, and SLAs: what each term means, how they relate to each other, practical examples for websites, setting good SLOs, and error budgets.

Uptime SLAs: What Your Hosting Provider Actually Promises

How to read an uptime SLA, what's actually covered, common exclusions hosting providers hide in the fine print, and how to claim credits when they miss their target.

SLA Monitoring: How to Track Uptime Promises

How to monitor SLA compliance: what to track, how to verify provider claims, tools and approaches for SLA monitoring, and how to request SLA credits with evidence.