Objective of a service level agreement

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A service level objective (SLO) is an agreed-upon performance target for a particular service over a period of time. SLOs define the expected status of services and help stakeholders manage the health of specific services, as well as optimize decisions balancing innovation and reliability. 1

SLOs are measured using service level indicators (SLIs), quantitative metrics of some aspect of service. SLOs are part of a broader agreement between service providers and customers—service level agreements (SLAs)—that outline the level of service a customer can expect from providers and set penalties if targets are not met.

To ensure that service levels are consistent with business requirements as well as customer desires, site reliability engineering (SRE) teams, DevOps, IT and other relevant teams must know the critical user journeys for each application: the interactions that enable end users to reach their desired result.

Internal buy-in is crucial for successful SLOs (and therefore, SLAs), and multiple stakeholders should take part in determining the SLOs, including product managers, DevOps and problem management teams, and infrastructure engineers. External customers are incorporated in the discussion through focus groups, studies, customer complaints and social media.

The key logic to SLOs is that service reliability leads to user happiness, which provides greater business opportunity. Establishing measurable reliability targets helps an organization balance an enjoyable and efficient user experience with reasonable cost: not breaking the IT budget with service levels beyond what is needed or expected.

SLOs are necessary because they define the quality of service (QoS) and reliability goals in concrete, measurable, objective terms. They are not intended to define the best performance level but a range of best possible and least acceptable performance standards. 1

The aim of SLOs is nicely summed up in 97 Things Every Cloud Engineer Should Know (link resides outside ibm.com), from O`Reilly Media: “How can you give management an easy way to instantly understand the tradeoffs between reliability, speed of innovation, and cost? SLOs are the answer. SLOs create clear reliability guidelines that balance the tradeoffs between cloud costs, speed of change, and external risks.”

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