This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2013) |
A service-level objective (SLO), as per the O'Reilly Site Reliability Engineering book, is a "target value or range of values for a service level that is measured by an SLI." [1] An SLO is a key element of a service-level agreement (SLA) between a service provider and a customer. SLOs are agreed upon as a means of measuring the performance of the service provider and are outlined as a way of avoiding disputes between the two parties based on misunderstanding.
There is often confusion in the use of SLAs and SLOs. The SLA is the entire agreement that specifies what service is to be provided, how it is supported, times, locations, costs, performance, and responsibilities of the parties involved. SLOs are specific measurable characteristics of the SLA such as availability, throughput, frequency, response time, or quality. These SLOs together are meant to define the expected service between the provider and the customer and vary depending on the service's urgency, resources, and budget. SLOs provide a quantitative means to define the level of service a customer can expect from a provider. [2]
The SLO are formed by setting goals for metrics (commonly called service level indicators, SLIs). As an example, an availability SLO may be defined as the expected measured value of an availability SLI over a prescribed duration (e.g. four weeks). The availability SLI used will vary based on the nature and architecture of the service. For example, a simple web service might use the ratio of successful responses served vs the total number of valid requests received. (total_success / total_valid) [3]
Sturm and Morris argue [4] that SLOs must be:
While Andrieux et al. define the SLO as "the quality of service aspect of the agreement. Syntactically, it is an assertion over the terms of the agreement as well as such qualities as date and time". [5] Keller and Ludwig more concisely define an SLO as "commitment to maintain a particular state of the service in a given period" with respect to the state of the SLA parameters. [6] Keller and Ludwig go on to state that while service providers will most often be the lead entity in taking on SLOs there is no firm definition as such and any entity can be responsible for an SLO. Along with this an SLO can be broken down into a number of different components.
Optionally an EvaluationEvent maybe assigned to the SLO, an EvaluationEvent is defined as the measure by which the SLO will be checked to see if it's meeting the Expression.
SLOs should generally be specified in terms of an achievement value or service level, a target measurement, a measurement period, and where and how they are measured. [2] As an example, "90% of calls to the helpdesk should be answered in less than 20 seconds measured over a one-month period as reported by the ACD system". Results can be reported as a percent of time that the target answer time was achieved and then compared to the desired service level (90%).
Type of Measure | Example SLO Requirement | Measurement Period |
---|---|---|
Availability | The application will be available 99.95% of the time | Over a year |
Service Desk Response | 75% of help desk calls will be answered in less than a minute 85% of help desk calls will be answered within two minutes 100% of help desk calls will be answered within three minutes | Over a month |
Incident Response Time | 99% of severity 1 tickets will be resolved within three hours 98% of severity 2 tickets will be resolved within eight hours 98% of severity 3 tickets will be resolved within three business days 98% of severity 4 tickets will be resolved within five business days | Over a quarter |
Response Time | 85% of TCP replies within 1.5 seconds of receiving a request 99.5% of TCP replies within 4 seconds of receiving a request | Over a month |
The SLO term is found in various scientific papers, for instance in the reference architecture of the SLA@SOI project, [7] and it is used in the Open Grid Forum document on WS-Agreement. [5]
A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web hosting services are sometimes called web hosts.
In engineering, a requirement is a condition that must be satisfied for the output of a work effort to be acceptable. It is an explicit, objective, clear and often quantitative description of a condition to be satisfied by a material, design, product, or service.
A service-level agreement (SLA) is an agreement between a service provider and a customer. Particular aspects of the service – quality, availability, responsibilities – are agreed between the service provider and the service user. The most common component of an SLA is that the services should be provided to the customer as agreed upon in the contract. As an example, Internet service providers and telcos will commonly include service level agreements within the terms of their contracts with customers to define the level(s) of service being sold in plain language terms. In this case, the SLA will typically have a technical definition of mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to repair or mean time to recovery (MTTR); identifying which party is responsible for reporting faults or paying fees; responsibility for various data rates; throughput; jitter; or similar measurable details.
ISO/IEC 9126Software engineering — Product quality was an international standard for the evaluation of software quality. It has been replaced by ISO/IEC 25010:2011.
Service Provisioning Markup Language (SPML) is an XML-based framework, being developed by OASIS, for exchanging user, resource and service provisioning information between cooperating organizations.
An operational-level agreement (OLA) defines interdependent relationships in support of a service-level agreement (SLA). The agreement describes the responsibilities of each internal support group toward other support groups, including the process and timeframe for delivery of their services. The objective of the OLA is to present a clear, concise and measurable description of the service provider's internal support relationships.
A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting in which the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone else. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc.
Service level measures the performance of a system, service or supply. Certain goals are defined and the service level gives the percentage to which those goals should be achieved.
ITIL security management describes the structured fitting of security into an organization. ITIL security management is based on the ISO 27001 standard. "ISO/IEC 27001:2005 covers all types of organizations. ISO/IEC 27001:2005 specifies the requirements for establishing, implementing, operating, monitoring, reviewing, maintaining and improving a documented Information Security Management System within the context of the organization's overall business risks. It specifies requirements for the implementation of security controls customized to the needs of individual organizations or parts thereof. ISO/IEC 27001:2005 is designed to ensure the selection of adequate and proportionate security controls that protect information assets and give confidence to interested parties."
Entity Framework (EF) is an open source object–relational mapping (ORM) framework for ADO.NET. It was originally shipped as an integral part of .NET Framework, however starting with Entity Framework version 6.0 it has been delivered separately from the .NET Framework.
Cloud storage is a model of computer data storage in which data, said to be on "the cloud", is stored remotely in logical pools and is accessible to users over a network, typically the Internet. The physical storage spans multiple servers, and the physical environment is typically owned and managed by a cloud computing provider. These cloud storage providers are responsible for keeping the data available and accessible, and the physical environment secured, protected, and running. People and organizations buy or lease storage capacity from the providers to store user, organization, or application data.
A shared services center – a center for shared services in an organization – is the entity responsible for the execution and the handling of specific operational tasks, such as accounting, human resources, payroll, IT, legal, compliance, purchasing, security. The shared services center is often a spin-off of the corporate services to separate all operational types of tasks from the corporate headquarters, which has to focus on a leadership and corporate governance type of role. As shared services centers are often cost centers, they are quite cost-sensitive also in terms of their headcount, labour costs and location selection criteria.
Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to ISO.
ITU-T Y.156sam Ethernet Service Activation Test Methodology is a draft recommendation under study by the ITU-T describing a new testing methodology adapted to the multiservice reality of packet-based networks.
ITU-T Y.1564 is an Ethernet service activation test methodology, which is the new ITU-T standard for turning up, installing and troubleshooting Ethernet-based services. It is the only standard test methodology that allows for complete validation of Ethernet service-level agreements (SLAs) in a single test.
Vested outsourcing is a hybrid business model in which contracting parties create a formal relational contract using shared values and goals and outcome-based economics to create an agreement that is mutually beneficial for each party. The model was developed out of research by the University of Tennessee led by Kate Vitasek.
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is a discipline in the field of Software Engineering and IT infrastructure support that monitors and improves the availability and performance of deployed software systems and large software services. There is typically a focus on automation and an Infrastructure as Code methodology. SRE uses elements of software engineering, IT infrastructure, web development, and operations to assist with reliability. It is similar to DevOps as they both aim to improve the reliability and availability of deployed software systems.
In information technology, a service level indicator (SLI) is a measure of the service level provided by a service provider to a customer. SLIs form the basis of service level objectives (SLOs), which in turn form the basis of service level agreements (SLAs); an SLI can be called an SLA metric.
Data center management is the collection of tasks performed by those responsible for managing ongoing operation of a data center. This includes Business service management and planning for the future.
Levels of service (LOS) is a term in asset management referring to the quality of a given service. Defining and measuring levels of service is a key activity in developing infrastructure asset management plans. Levels of service may be tied to physical performance of assets or be defined via customer expectation and satisfaction. The latter is more service-centric rather than asset-centric. For instance, when measuring the LOS of a road, it could be measured by a physical performance indicator such as Pavement Condition Index (PCI) or by a measure related to customer satisfaction such as the number of complaints per month about that certain road section. Or in the case of traffic level of service, it could be measured by the geometry of road or by travel time of the vehicles, which reflects the quality of traffic flow. So, levels of service can have multiple facets: customer satisfaction, environmental requirements and legal requirements.