When customers first learn about high availability in Timescale Cloud, they often express concerns about giving their data to a third-party vendor. However, hosted databases like Timescale Cloud can provide a reliable and scalable solution, with AWS handling the management and reliability of underlying hardware. The platform's decoupled compute and storage architecture allows for rapid recovery from compute failures, which can be automatically triggered without user intervention. Additionally, replicas can be enabled to ensure near-zero downtime and data loss in case of database failures. Backups are also maintained, but their use is not the primary method of data protection, as they can result in longer downtime compared to replication. By understanding how Timescale Cloud handles high availability, users can make informed decisions about their workload's requirements and choose a solution that meets their needs.