Meaning & use
five nines reliability
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountabletechnicalbusiness
A level of service availability equal to 99.999%, meaning only about five minutes of downtime a year.
Grammar: Uncountable: we talk about achieving or promising five nines reliability, not 'a five nines reliability'.
Patterns
- achieve five nines reliability
- promise five nines reliability
- five nines reliability in something
The bank's payment system is designed for five nines reliability.
Few small companies can afford the cost of five nines reliability.
Engineers measure five nines reliability as 99.999% uptime.
Common combinations
- achieve five nines reliability
- The team worked for months to achieve five nines reliability.
- five nines reliability target
- Our five nines reliability target means very little downtime.
- five nines reliability standard
- Hospitals often need a five nines reliability standard for records.
- deliver five nines reliability
- The cloud provider promises to deliver five nines reliability.
Synonyms and how they differ
- high availability
- A broader term for systems that keep running almost all the time; 'five nines' is one exact level of it.
- uptime
- Refers to the time a system is working, not to the specific 99.999% figure.
Word family
- reliability noun
- The quality of working correctly and consistently.
- reliable adjective
- Able to be trusted to work well.
- reliably adverb
- In a way that can be trusted.
Commonly confused: five nines reliability or five nines?
five nines reliability vs five nines
The short form of the same idea; it means 99.999% availability, not five separate things.
Practice
A service with five nines reliability is available what percentage of the time?
Choose one answer.
Five nines means five 9s after the decimal point, i.e. 99.999%. 99.9% would be 'three nines'.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “five nines reliability”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.