Capacity Management: Guided Practitioner Satnav – SLA definitions (9 of 17)

The SLA definition is often expressed in terms of normal and maximum peaks for traffic with mandatory and desirable performance measures.  This seems simple but the devil lies in the detail of the wording of the contract as regards what will happen when different boundaries are crossed. 

This slide shows the typical agreement, with green showing as AOK, red when things are definitely wrong and amber for all the areas of potential confusion.  Grey is used for ‘not applicable’.

The definitions should also cater for the levels of service in situations of disaster recovery or imposed demand management as well as standard production.

SLA’s tend to come in three major flavours, a three page summary of little practical benefit, a thirty page identification of all the metrics and values involved and a three hundred page version of the same thing after lawyers have reworked it into a binding contract.

Next on our list to look at is Availability and I’ll deal with this on Monday.

In the meantime there's a chance for one person to win a signed copy of my Capacity Management book (referred to in the first blog of this series)Simply subscribe to our blog or YouTube Channel,Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn between 31st January and 15th March inclusive to be entered in to our drawing.
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Adam Grummitt

Distinguished Engineer