1 / 12

System design · Fundamentals

Availability is a fraction over a window

Availability is the fraction of time (or eligible requests) the service meets its definition of “available.” A 99.9% monthly target allows roughly 43 minutes of downtime in a 30-day month. The exact result depends on the measurement window and whether the SLI is time-based or request-based.

A target is meaningful only when the eligible events and failure conditions are defined.