6 ms·

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.

why?

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.