What happens when a web application you depend on goes offline? It can be inconvenient, disappointing, and potentially cause serious problems for you.

But what if you find out that the web application wasn’t working by design because it was “down for maintenance”? That only makes the situation worse!

Your customers expect your application to be operational when they need it, not when you find it convenient. Maintenance windows impose your schedule on your customers and can negatively impact their experience.

And there is no reason for it! A well-designed, well-operated, modern web application never…ever…has to be down for scheduled maintenance.

In this episode, we’ll discuss why maintenance windows are a thing of the past.



Today on Modern Digital Business

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Thank you for listening, and welcome to the modern world of the modern digital business!

About Lee

Lee Atchison is a software architect, author, public speaker, and recognized thought leader on cloud computing and application modernization. His most recent book, Architecting for Scale (O’Reilly Media), is an essential resource for technical teams looking to maintain high availability and manage risk in their cloud environments. Lee has been widely quoted in multiple technology publications, including InfoWorld, Diginomica, IT Brief, Programmable Web, CIO Review, and DZone, and has been a featured speaker at events across the globe.

Take a look at Lee's many books, courses, and articles by going to leeatchison.com.

Looking to modernize your application organization?

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Lee Atchison: 00:00:00

What happens when a web application you depend on

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goes offline? It can be inconvenient, disappointing and

Lee Atchison: 00:00:08

potentially cause serious problems for you.

Lee Atchison: 00:00:11

But what if you find out that the web application wasn't

Lee Atchison: 00:00:14

working by design, because it was down for maintenance? That

Lee Atchison: 00:00:20

only makes the situation worse. Your customers expect your

Lee Atchison: 00:00:25

application to be operational when they need it. Not when you

Lee Atchison: 00:00:29

find a convenient maintenance windows impose your schedule on

Lee Atchison: 00:00:34

your customers, and can negatively impact their

Lee Atchison: 00:00:37

experience. And there is no reason for it. A well designed,

Lee Atchison: 00:00:43

well operated modern web application never ever has to be

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down for scheduled maintenance. In this episode, we'll discuss

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why maintenance windows are a thing of the past. Are you

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ready? Let's go.

Voiceover: 00:00:59

This is the modern digital business podcast, the

Voiceover: 00:01:02

technical Leaders Guide to modernizing your applications

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and digital business. Whether you're a business technology

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leader, or a small business innovator, keeping up with the

Voiceover: 00:01:11

digital business revelation is a must here to help make it easier

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with actionable insights and recommendations, as well as

Voiceover: 00:01:18

thoughtful interviews with industry experts, Lee Atchison.

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Several years ago, I purchased a digital smart

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thermostat for my home, I wanted to be able to set the

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temperature remotely and check on it when I wasn't at home.

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Basic requirements of a smart thermostat nowadays.

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I set it up and connected it to the manufacturers cloud back

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end. All was fine. Or so I thought.

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A couple of weeks later, I received an email from the

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manufacturer about the upcoming upgrade of their back end cloud

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service.

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During the time of the upgrade, which was going to last for

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several months, the company would be bringing down its

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applications for quote many hours at a time and would do so

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at quote various times during the day.

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They wouldn't commit to specific days and times, just that they

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would be bringing the system down for a while, seemingly

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randomly, many times over the next several months. The

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company, of course, apologized in advance for the

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inconvenience.

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Yeah, right.

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What was that all about?

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at seemingly random times, my thermostat would stop working

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for many hours at a time. And this would go on for months. I

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don't think so. The very next day, I replaced the thermostat

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with one from another company throughout the old one and wrote

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them a scathing negative review, there is no way I would deal

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with that level of bad service.

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Available availability matters.

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Let's look at another example. In order to receive certain

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disability benefits that he's eligible for, my son has to

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report his income to the US government. To do that he uses

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an application on his cell phone. Once a month, he logs

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into the application to report his income for the previous

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month.

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This iPhone application, however, has a major problem

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with it.

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When you launch the application at the wrong time of the day, it

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shows you a message. The message says this application only works

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between the hours of 8am to 5pm. Eastern Time, Monday through

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Friday.

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Hmm, what is that? That's right, this online SAS based web

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application only operates during, quote normal business

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hours. This obviously makes the application very hard to use.

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Why would they restrict the hours that you'd use an

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application like this?

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As a government institution, they undoubtedly figured they

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didn't want to let the application run when nobody was

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in the office to support it. After all, how could they

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possibly fix anything that went wrong if they weren't in the

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office?

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Availability matters.

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These two stories are extreme examples, but they represent

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examples of a common problem in many online applications. The

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company's operating the applications create maintenance

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windows, periods of time where they regularly bring the

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application offline in order to perform routine maintenance and

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upgrades. Wants to find they treat these windows like they

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are free downtime periods. They feel they are free to bring

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their applications down and work on

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Mmm. Without it counting is downtime.

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Well, nothing could be further from the truth. Downtime is

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downtime, whether it's planned, unexpected, or unplanned and

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unexpected if your customers want to use your application,

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and the application is not available for any reason, it's

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downtime.

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You cannot operate a modern digital online application or

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service without maintaining a high level of availability.

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When your customers want to use your service, they expect your

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service will be operational. They do not care about

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maintenance schedules, they do not tolerate downtime.

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They use your application when it's convenient for them, not

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when it's convenient for you. It's bad enough when a real

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application failure causes your availability to suffer. But

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planning and having downtime in the form of a maintenance window

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is just formalizing customer dissatisfaction.

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In these modern times, with the tools and services that are

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available for modern cloud native application development,

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there is simply no reason why a digital application should

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require any sort of downtime at all, for any maintenance or

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upgrade. In today's world, it's unnecessary. From a customer's

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point of view, it is unacceptable.

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Almost any upgrade can be made live without any downtime. Even

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upgrades are required database schema changes and other data

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migration tasks can be implemented without requiring

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any downtime. maintenance tasks can be performed while the

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application continues to operate. There is no longer any

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valid reason for you to plan on bringing your modern application

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down.

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And if your application does require maintenance windows, due

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to some historical architectural issue with your application,

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they used to treat this as what it is a serious problem. This is

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technical debt imposed on your application that is costing your

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company money. Your customers don't care why your application

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is down. They just care that it is down. as your application

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grows and expands it will be harder to justify having a

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regular downtime window. customer usage patterns expand

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and customers expect the application to operate at all

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times of the day and night.

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Additionally, building systems and processes for your

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development organization that don't require the use of

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maintenance windows encourages them to adhere to deployment and

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operational best practices. You see, we developers tend to get

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lazy when we act like we know we have maintenance windows

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available for our years. designing and implementing

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changes that don't require a maintenance window requires

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additional time and thought, which encourages better

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attention to detail and to best practices. When developers are

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required to think about the operational impact of a change,

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they tend to produce fewer operational problems than when

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they simply throw it into production and not consider the

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ramifications when you depend on maintenance windows. Ultimately,

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overall quality and availability suffers. Even if you currently

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have easily identifiable low usage times during which you

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feel you can afford to bring your application down. That

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doesn't mean that those same low usage times will be available to

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you as you expand and grow. International expansion products

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that expansion, customer base expansion can all contribute to

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increased need for 24 by seven availability. A previous client

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of mine regularly scheduled a two hour maintenance window each

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week, so they can perform upgrades and data adjustments

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while allowing them to keep operating normally the rest of

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the time. The problem is the maintenance window is by itself

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a major hit to their availability. a two hour

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maintenance window means that the greatest availability they

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can offer their customers was 98.8%. By definition, you will

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not be able to operate greater than 98.8% of the time by

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comparison to other online applications 98.8% is a horrible

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statistic. For example, the Amazon s3 service guarantees 99

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Point 99% service availability, their data integrity SLA is even

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higher than that. This guarantee amounts to a maximum of 61

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seconds of downtime each week. In order for s3 to make this SLA

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consistently, they can never planned to have any downtime for

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any maintenance ever. Any outage at all will cause them to fail

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their contracted SLA. And they back up their SLA policy with

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money. If Amazon s3 is down just a mere 4.3 minutes in any given

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month, then AWS will refund 10% of everyone's storage costs for

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the entire month. As you can imagine, this would be a

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significant amount of revenue loss for Amazon. And it's not

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just s3. It's a mindset across all of AWS and across all of

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Amazon. This commitment is ingrained in the minds of every

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engineer that works at Amazon. You build everything so that no

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downtime is ever needed. No matter what the change to the

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system involves no downtime ever.

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Yes, 99.99% is a high level of availability to guarantee and

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not every company needs that level for their business to

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thrive. But even at a lower percentage of availability,

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there's no room for planned maintenance windows. 99%

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availability means 1.6 hours per week of maximum downtime. 99.9%

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availability, which is pretty reasonable, means 10 minutes per

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week of maximum downtime, and 99.99% availability means less

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than 61 seconds per week of maximum downtime. Even at these

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lower availability levels. A planned two hour maintenance

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window each week means your application will always always

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fail its SLA. Now some companies don't count planned downtime as

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official downtime, but you can bet that your customers do And

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isn't that what really matters. Thank you for tuning in to

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modern digital business. This podcast exists because of the

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support of you my listeners. If you enjoy what you hear, please

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leave a review on Apple podcasts or directly on our website at

Lee Atchison: 00:12:38

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Lee Atchison: 00:12:43

or comment, click the Microphone icon in the lower right hand

Lee Atchison: 00:12:56

corner of our website. Your recording might be featured on a

Lee Atchison: 00:13:00

future episode. Make sure you get every new episode when they

Lee Atchison: 00:13:04

become available. Click subscribe and your favorite

Lee Atchison: 00:13:07

podcast player or check out our website@mdb.fm If you want to

Lee Atchison: 00:13:12

learn more from me to check out one of my books, courses or

Lee Atchison: 00:13:15

articles by going to Lee atchison.com. And all of these

Lee Atchison: 00:13:19

links are included in the show notes. Thank you for listening

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and welcome to the world of the modern digital business.