A company has signed a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with its cloud provider for a critical database service. The SLA specifies a 99.95% uptime guarantee and a maximum response time of 100ms for read operations. During a recent incident, the database experienced 20 minutes of downtime in a 30-day month, and the average read response time increased to 150ms for a continuous period of 4 hours. Which of the following statements is true regarding the SLA violation?
- AOnly the response time guarantee was violated.
- BNeither guarantee was violated, as the downtime was within acceptable limits.
- CBoth the uptime and response time guarantees were violated.
- DOnly the uptime guarantee was violated.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: C. Both the uptime and response time guarantees were violated.
First, calculate the uptime: 30 days * 24 hours/day * 60 minutes/hour = 43,200 total minutes. Downtime = 20 minutes. Uptime = 43,200 - 20 = 43,180 minutes. Uptime % = (43,180 / 43,200) * 100 = 99.9536%. Since 99.9536% is greater than or equal to 99.95%, the uptime guarantee was NOT violated. Second, the response time increased to 150ms, which is above the 100ms maximum, meaning the response time guarantee WAS violated. Therefore, only the response time guarantee was violated.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. The response time guarantee (max 100ms) was violated (actual 150ms). This is the correct answer.
- B. The response time guarantee was indeed violated.
- D. The uptime guarantee (99.9536%) was met (>= 99.95%).
SLA Compliance Assessment
The process of verifying if a cloud provider has met the terms and conditions outlined in a Service Level Agreement (SLA), typically involving uptime and performance metrics.
- Requires calculation of actual metrics
- Compares actuals against agreed-upon thresholds
- Multiple metrics can be part of one SLA
Memory trick: To check an SLA, you must measure each promise (uptime, response) and see if it's broken.