7 ms·

If you pay for Google Services, they have an SLA (service level agreement) of 99.9% [1]. If their services are down more than 43 minutes this month[2], you can

If you pay for Google Services, they have an SLA (service level agreement) of 99.9% [1]. If their services are down more than 43 minutes this month[2], you can request “free days” of usage. Edit: Services were down from ~12:55pm to ~1:52pm, it's 57minutes. Thanks hiby007 [1] https://workspace.google.com/intl/en/terms/sla.html https://workspace.google.com/intl/en/terms/sla.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability#Percentage_calculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_availability#Percentage_c...

api 6y ago
SLAs are largely bullshit.
- kaushikt 6y ago
  why?
  - gsich 6y ago
    In this example: you get free days. Which depending on your business might be worthless if you have suffered more monetary loss due to the downtime than the free days are worth.
    - SifJar 6y ago
      But still better than nothing. And for some (most?) people/businesses, probably worth more than any resulting monetary loss
    - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
      Exactly; downtime doesn't cost a cloud service much. At worst it causes reputation damage, with possibly large companies deciding to go for a competitor, losing a contract worth tens or hundreds of millions.
  - fullstop 6y ago
    Not OP, but how do you measure them? Let's say, for example, you can send and receive email, but attaching files does not work. Is the service up or down? What if the majority of your users can access the service, but one of your BGP peers is not routing properly and some of your users are unable to access?
    - gsich 6y ago
      Down because email attachments are base64 encoded files written in plaintext into the body. So if those are not working, email itself is not working.
      - abluecloud 6y ago
        that was a bad example. i guess the comment was trying to say "how do you account for partial service degradations". (i dont think SLAs are BS btw)
    - pas 6y ago
      The SLA itself should specify the way availability is measured.
    - lawrjone 6y ago
      Google do a very good job of defining their SLAs. In answer to your question, they'll accept evidence from your own monitoring system when you claim on the SLA. They pair that up to their own knowledge about how the system was performing, then make the grant. Google are exceptionally good at this, from my experience. Far better than most other companies, who aim to provide as little detail as possible while getting away with 'providing an SLA'.
  - nickjj 6y ago
    This topic just came up recently on a podcast I was on where someone said a large service was down for X amount of time and the service being down tanked his entire business while it was down for days. But he was compensated in hosting credits for the exact amount of down time for the 1 service that caused the issue. It took so long to resolve because it took support a while to figure out it was their service, not his site. So then I jokingly responded with that being like going to a restaurant, getting massive food poisoning, almost dying, ending up with a $150,000 hospital bill and then the restaurant emails you with "Dear valued customer, we're sorry for the inconvenience and have decided to award you a $50 gift card for any of our restaurants, thanks!". If your SLA agreement is only for precisely calculated credits, that's not really going to help in the grand scheme of things.
    - boringg 6y ago
      Completely agree with your analogy but have you ever seen any SLA that provides any additional liability? I haven't seen them - you are stuck either relying on hosting services SLA or DIY.
      - gwright 6y ago
        Or purchasing business continuity insurance.
      - gravitas 6y ago
        I cannot share details for the obvious reason, but yes - there are SLAs signed into contract directly behind the scenes which result in automatic payouts of a condition isn't met and it's not a simple credit. Enterprise level SLAs are crafted by lawyers in negotiations behind the scenes and are not the same as what you see on random public services. Our customers have them with us, and we have them with our vendors. Contract negotiations take months at the $$$$ level.
        boringg 6y ago
        That is a fair point. Is this a situation where you asymmetrically powerful? I have to imagine you would have considerable clout to represent a fair bit of their revenue in order to dictate terms. When I wrote my comment it was in the vein of a smaller organization.
hiby007 6y ago
If you click on the red status dots, it has report with timing.
fgblanch 6y ago
In [1] it says: "Customer Must Request Service Credit." Do you know how to request it?
- judge2020 6y ago
  Admins can go to admin.google.com and click the help button to start a support request.
sit_i_piz 6y ago
If all 6 million G Suite customers, with an average number of users at 25 per G Suite account, paying the $20/user fee, requested the three day credit for this breach in the SLA contract for the outage, it'd cost Google about 300 million dollars. Which is .22% of there COH this quarter...
- docuru 6y ago
  Or on the regular basis, they'd get $300M every other month (exclude any fee)
rachelbythebay 6y ago
Your nines or their nines? I bet if you personally can't use it, but their overall reliability meets the bar, then they're within SLA. Don't ask why I know this.
- mk89 6y ago
  You know there are companies who build crawlers or health check agents exactly for this purpose, so that they know precisely from when to when the service they pay or they need for their business doesn't work and went out of SLA. I think it's brilliant and the only way to make any company pay. I believe you can sometimes get away with a couple of pingdom checks/jobs.
  - danuker 6y ago
    Like they have any bargaining power against Google.
    - mk89 6y ago
      I don't know how it works in such cases, I mean, this is publicly known that there was an outage. What I believe is that customers will probably get free GCP credits and that's it, everything is good as before.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  This person service-provides
ehsankia 6y ago
It seems like they claim around 45m https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/14/gmail-youtube-google-docs-and-other-services-go-down-simultaneously-in-multiple-countries/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/14/gmail-youtube-google-docs-...
- LdSGSgvupDV 6y ago
  Is this official announcement? I don't find any link to google in your posted url.
  - ehsankia 6y ago
    not an announcement, seems like just a statement. I assume an official statement will come with the post mortem blog post in the next few days.

api 6y ago

SLAs are largely bullshit.

kaushikt 6y ago
why?
- gsich 6y ago
  In this example: you get free days. Which depending on your business might be worthless if you have suffered more monetary loss due to the downtime than the free days are worth.
  - SifJar 6y ago
    But still better than nothing. And for some (most?) people/businesses, probably worth more than any resulting monetary loss
  - Cthulhu_ 6y ago
    Exactly; downtime doesn't cost a cloud service much. At worst it causes reputation damage, with possibly large companies deciding to go for a competitor, losing a contract worth tens or hundreds of millions.
- fullstop 6y ago
  Not OP, but how do you measure them? Let's say, for example, you can send and receive email, but attaching files does not work. Is the service up or down? What if the majority of your users can access the service, but one of your BGP peers is not routing properly and some of your users are unable to access?
  - gsich 6y ago
    Down because email attachments are base64 encoded files written in plaintext into the body. So if those are not working, email itself is not working.
    - abluecloud 6y ago
      that was a bad example. i guess the comment was trying to say "how do you account for partial service degradations". (i dont think SLAs are BS btw)
  - pas 6y ago
    The SLA itself should specify the way availability is measured.
  - lawrjone 6y ago
    Google do a very good job of defining their SLAs. In answer to your question, they'll accept evidence from your own monitoring system when you claim on the SLA. They pair that up to their own knowledge about how the system was performing, then make the grant. Google are exceptionally good at this, from my experience. Far better than most other companies, who aim to provide as little detail as possible while getting away with 'providing an SLA'.
- nickjj 6y ago
  This topic just came up recently on a podcast I was on where someone said a large service was down for X amount of time and the service being down tanked his entire business while it was down for days. But he was compensated in hosting credits for the exact amount of down time for the 1 service that caused the issue. It took so long to resolve because it took support a while to figure out it was their service, not his site. So then I jokingly responded with that being like going to a restaurant, getting massive food poisoning, almost dying, ending up with a $150,000 hospital bill and then the restaurant emails you with "Dear valued customer, we're sorry for the inconvenience and have decided to award you a $50 gift card for any of our restaurants, thanks!". If your SLA agreement is only for precisely calculated credits, that's not really going to help in the grand scheme of things.
  - boringg 6y ago
    Completely agree with your analogy but have you ever seen any SLA that provides any additional liability? I haven't seen them - you are stuck either relying on hosting services SLA or DIY.
    - gwright 6y ago
      Or purchasing business continuity insurance.
    - gravitas 6y ago
      I cannot share details for the obvious reason, but yes - there are SLAs signed into contract directly behind the scenes which result in automatic payouts of a condition isn't met and it's not a simple credit. Enterprise level SLAs are crafted by lawyers in negotiations behind the scenes and are not the same as what you see on random public services. Our customers have them with us, and we have them with our vendors. Contract negotiations take months at the $$$$ level.
      - boringg 6y ago
        That is a fair point. Is this a situation where you asymmetrically powerful? I have to imagine you would have considerable clout to represent a fair bit of their revenue in order to dictate terms. When I wrote my comment it was in the vein of a smaller organization.

hiby007 6y ago

If you click on the red status dots, it has report with timing.

fgblanch 6y ago

In [1] it says: "Customer Must Request Service Credit." Do you know how to request it?

judge2020 6y ago
Admins can go to admin.google.com and click the help button to start a support request.

sit_i_piz 6y ago

If all 6 million G Suite customers, with an average number of users at 25 per G Suite account, paying the $20/user fee, requested the three day credit for this breach in the SLA contract for the outage, it'd cost Google about 300 million dollars. Which is .22% of there COH this quarter...

docuru 6y ago
Or on the regular basis, they'd get $300M every other month (exclude any fee)

rachelbythebay 6y ago

Your nines or their nines? I bet if you personally can't use it, but their overall reliability meets the bar, then they're within SLA. Don't ask why I know this.

mk89 6y ago
You know there are companies who build crawlers or health check agents exactly for this purpose, so that they know precisely from when to when the service they pay or they need for their business doesn't work and went out of SLA. I think it's brilliant and the only way to make any company pay. I believe you can sometimes get away with a couple of pingdom checks/jobs.
- danuker 6y ago
  Like they have any bargaining power against Google.
  - mk89 6y ago
    I don't know how it works in such cases, I mean, this is publicly known that there was an outage. What I believe is that customers will probably get free GCP credits and that's it, everything is good as before.
blaser-waffle 6y ago
This person service-provides

ehsankia 6y ago

It seems like they claim around 45m https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/14/gmail-youtube-google-docs-and-other-services-go-down-simultaneously-in-multiple-countries/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/14/gmail-youtube-google-docs-...

LdSGSgvupDV 6y ago
Is this official announcement? I don't find any link to google in your posted url.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  not an announcement, seems like just a statement. I assume an official statement will come with the post mortem blog post in the next few days.