How to check server uptime
Learn how to check server uptime — from the Linux uptime command to continuous uptime monitoring and uptime % tracking with Servor.
"Uptime" can mean two different things, and it helps to know which one you need. Sometimes you want how long the machine has been running since its last reboot. More often you want what percentage of the time your service has been available — the number you'd put in an SLA. This guide covers both, and shows how Servor tracks uptime continuously so you don't have to.
Two meanings of "uptime"
| Question | What it measures | How you check it |
|---|---|---|
| How long since the last reboot? | The machine's runtime | The uptime command, on the server |
| How available has the service been? | Reliability over a period, as a % | Continuous monitoring from the outside |
The first is a one-off snapshot. The second is what customers actually care about — and it's only meaningful if something checks the service continuously and remembers the result.
Check uptime on the machine (the uptime command)
If you have shell access, the quickest check is the Linux uptime command:
uptimeYou'll get something like:
14:32:07 up 12 days, 3:14, 2 users, load average: 0.08, 0.03, 0.01
That tells you the machine has been up for 12 days and shows the 1-, 5- and 15-minute load averages. You can run this in Servor's web terminal without opening an SSH session. It's useful, but it only tells you about this moment and this reboot — it says nothing about whether your service was reachable last Tuesday at 3 a.m.
Uptime the machine vs. uptime the service
A server can have weeks of machine uptime while the website on it was down for an hour. For availability you need to watch the service, not just the box.
Check uptime continuously (uptime monitoring)
To answer "how available has my service been?", you need a monitor that checks it on a schedule and records every result. That's exactly what a Servor monitor does.
Create a monitor for the service
Create a monitor pointed at your service — an HTTP monitor for a website or API, a TCP/port monitor for a database, and so on. Pick a check interval: shorter intervals detect outages sooner. Create a monitor in Servor
Let it build history
Every check records whether the service was up, degraded, or down. Over time this becomes your uptime history. See monitor status for how each state is decided.
Read the uptime %
Servor calculates an uptime percentage from the recorded checks over a period. This is the number to track, share, and hold yourself to.
Get alerted on changes
Add alerts and a notification channel so you hear about a drop immediately rather than discovering it in the history later.
How Servor tracks uptime %
Servor turns the stream of checks into a running uptime percentage — the share of checks where the service was available over the chosen window. Because every check is stored, you get a trend rather than a single reading, and the same data powers the uptime history shown publicly on a status page.
Show uptime to your users
Add components linked to your monitors on a status page and your uptime history becomes public automatically. You can also embed a status badge in a README or site footer. Create a status page in Servor
Understanding uptime numbers
Small percentages hide large amounts of downtime. A rough sense of scale:
| Uptime | Approx. downtime per month |
|---|---|
| 99% | ~7 hours |
| 99.9% ("three nines") | ~43 minutes |
| 99.99% ("four nines") | ~4 minutes |
The gap between 99% and 99.9% is the difference between an outage your users tolerate and one they barely notice. What's achievable depends on your setup — the point is to measure it honestly and improve deliberately. See reduce downtime for how.