what is a service level agreement information

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What is a Service Level Agreement

Information (SLA)

A Service Level Agreement is an important document that is used to define the level of aservice that exists between a service provider and their customer.

The agreement is generally in expressed in a simple language so that it can be clearly

understood by the customer. The document may also include more technical terms for

defining the service. The Service Level Agreement is often part of a wider service contract.

A Service Level Agreement can either be an informal contract between parties or a legally binding contract.

The SLA may address several areas including the availability of the service, the performance

of the service, how it will operate, priorities, responsibilities of involved parties, guarantees

and warranties.

As well as defining key areas, the Service Level Agreement may also specify a level of

service, including targets and a minimum level that can be reached.

Some of the common uses for a Service Level Agreement would be for telecom companies,

IT service providers, Internet Service roviders !IS" and outsourcing.

Types of Service Level Agreement

As a Service Level Agreement can be used in many areas, there are several types of SLA that

can be used, including#

• $ %ustomer SLA# This is where there is an agreement with an individual customer


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• $ Service SLA# This service agreement is for every customer making use of the

services being provided

• $ &ulti$level SLA# This is a combination of levels with the purpose of addressing

multiple sets of customers

• $ %orporate SLA# This covers all Service Level &anagement !SL&" issues

• $ %ustomer Level SLA# %overs all SL& issues that apply to a particular group of

customers

• $ Service Level SLA# This covers all SL& issues that apply to specific services

What are SLAs and why are they important?

Paul Randal - MSFT

4 Mar 2007 2:52 PM

• 5

(In the UK now hanging out with Kimberly and Tony Rogerson before teaching a Masterclass

tomorrow in Reading. Then it's off to Copenhagen for !" er#er $pen %orld & with a little

RR in "ondon beforehand and Copenhagen afterwards& before we fly bac to the U on

unday. The weather here is actually better than in eattle)*

I've had a bunch of feedback from the survey I sent out !still need more before posting any

statistics though" and various things have (umped out at me. The most worrying is that many

people either don't know what their SLAs are or have no idea whether they can meet them.

)ere are some *uestions around SLAs $ if you can't answer +,) to all of them, then you may

be in trouble.

Do you know what an SLA is?

SLA Service Level Agreement. SLAs are agreements between you and your customers. If

you're a +A, then your customer is typically the company for whom you work. -xamples of

SLAs are#

1. In the event of a corrupton! or other d"a"ter! the #a$#u# a#ount ofdata lo"" " the la"t 15 #nute" of tran"acton".

2. In the event of a corrupton! or other d"a"ter! the #a$#u# a#ount of

do%nt#e the applcaton can tolerate " 20 #nute".

http://blogs.msdn.com/35712/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlserverstorageengine/archive/2007/03/04/slas-what-slas.aspx?Redirected=true#commentshttp://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/Kimberlyhttp://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/Kimberlyhttp://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/tonyrogerson/default.aspxhttp://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/tonyrogerson/default.aspxhttp://www.miracleas.dk/index.asp?page=168&page2=323http://blogs.msdn.com/35712/ProfileUrlRedirect.ashxhttp://blogs.msdn.com/b/sqlserverstorageengine/archive/2007/03/04/slas-what-slas.aspx?Redirected=true#commentshttp://www.sqlskills.com/blogs/Kimberlyhttp://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/tonyrogerson/default.aspxhttp://www.miracleas.dk/index.asp?page=168&page2=323


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sually, it's a combination of SLAs such as those above.

Do you know why SLAs are important?

)ere's the catch $ an SLA is really more than (ust an agreement between you and your

customers $ it's more like a contract that you're obligated to meet. This means that if you're a+A with /ero$downtime and /ero$data loss SLAs, you need to make sure that in the event

of a corruption you can actually meet those SLAs. The obvious thing is that if the SLAs

cannot be met then the business will suffer downtime and data loss. The not so obvious thing

is that if you're the one who agreed to the SLAs in the first place, and when the disaster

strikes, the capabilities of the system are far below the SLA's re*uirements, then you could

lose your (ob $ resume0%1 time $ I've heard of it happening...

Do you know your SLAs?

2ou have to know what your SLAs are so you can make sure the system can meet them.

Several +As I discussed this with don't know what their business' SLAs are, even thoughthey are responsible for making sure they are met. I find this astounding $ how can you sign

up for meeting an SLA when you don't know that the SLA is3 -specially if failing to meet the

SLA could lead to resume0%1 time...

Do you think you can meet your SLAs?

The other reason to know your SLAs, of course, is so that you can correctly architect your

system to meet them. There are a bunch of technologies you can use and strategies you can

employ to work towards meeting your SLAs !well beyond the scope of this blog post but will

be covered through the year". If you find that you can't meet your SLAs, you need to push$ back on your management $ otherwise you're setting yourself up for trouble when a disaster

occurs and you can't meet the SLAs $ you'll be held responsible.

Do you know you can meet your SLAs?

2our disaster recovery plan looks great on paper $ but have you actually tried it3 I know of

one company that has a 45 minute downtime SLA for a 67789 database but the +A is

relying on clusters to provide that for him. That won't work if the database is corrupt

!remember a failover cluster has a single point of failure in its shared$nothing configuration $

the disks" and needs to be restored from the last full backup... Another company I know of

relies on database mirroring to failover in the event of a disaster but has never tried it to see if their application fails over gracefully... 2ou have to make sure you've practiced recovering

from a disaster before the first real disaster happens $ you'll be ama/ed at the little things that

are discovered !e.g. if the on$site backups are bad, how long will it take to get the offsite

copies brought in$house from the off$site location 477 miles away3 %an you still meet your

45 minute downtime SLA in that case3"

Summary

As you can can see from my short list of *uestions and answers above, its vital that you

understand your SLAs and know that you can meet them $ your business !and (ob:" may

depend on it. If you're having trouble, drop me a line ! prandal;microsoft.com" and I'll seewhat I can do to help.

mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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