> While the SLA says 100%, don't expect perfection
When you have an SLA, understand what it is: a financial arrangement whereby you can request a prorated refund for certain types of outages. It is not in any way a guarantee on the part of a provider that you'll experience even average uptime equaling or exceeding the SLA, just that they can pay out the fraction of customer requests for service credits they receive for the covered outages they have and still make money.
The reality for the type of service the author of this post purchased is that for any physical damage to the fiber plant, he will experience hours of outage while a splice crew locates and repairs the damage. Verizon might offer a 100% SLA, but they didn't engineer it to even five nines of availability. That would require redundant equipment and service entrances at his premises along with path diversity end-to-end.
It's still a very high motivator to keep the service up though. It's not a guarantee of anything as you said but I've been on call for this kind of contract.
And then you get very good at pointing fingers too. Not too sure about this though :D
The reality of business is that a contract is only worth what you can enforce. SLAs are usually worthless:
1. Unless you are a large customer who accounts for an important amount of their bottom line, probably you have little financial leverage with the vendor.
2. The amount at stake in the SLA is not worth going to court for. It's unenforceable and in fact, the amount is usually meaningless.
Let's say you pay $10,000 per month for your 100% SLA dedicated circuit, and it goes down for an entire month. Let's say the vendor doesn't get around to paying you. Is it worth hiring a lawyer to collect $10K? Is it worth distracting you from your job emotionally and mentally, and consuming many hours of your time? Probably not.
Let's say your circuit is down for 3 hours. Let's say the SLA even pays you 3x what you pay for the service for any downtime (most I've seen just refund the money for that time). Let's see: ($10,000/month) / (720 hrs/month) = $13.89/hour. The SLA pays $41.67/hr of downtime, or $125 for your downtime. Is it even worth figuring out how to apply and filling out the form? No. You have much bigger issues in business, and if you don't ... well, then you have bigger issues.
3. The cost to the vendor is reputation: You tell your peers how much your service sucks, and word gets around. I've had techs take disinterested attitudes toward their poor uptime on our circuit; when I've called the account managers, they can have a very different response - they want me spreading their name around in a different way. That has nothing to do with the SLA.
> Verizon might offer a 100% SLA, but they didn't engineer it to even five nines of availability. That would require redundant equipment and service entrances at his premises along with path diversity end-to-end.
Agreed. There is no substitute for the physical reality of the circuit and service, which you should understand if you are buying it. Putting a shiny SLA on it will have no effect on the outcome.
When you have an SLA, understand what it is: a financial arrangement whereby you can request a prorated refund for certain types of outages. It is not in any way a guarantee on the part of a provider that you'll experience even average uptime equaling or exceeding the SLA, just that they can pay out the fraction of customer requests for service credits they receive for the covered outages they have and still make money.
The reality for the type of service the author of this post purchased is that for any physical damage to the fiber plant, he will experience hours of outage while a splice crew locates and repairs the damage. Verizon might offer a 100% SLA, but they didn't engineer it to even five nines of availability. That would require redundant equipment and service entrances at his premises along with path diversity end-to-end.