CIS 3355 service level agreement
The Service Level Agreement (SLA) I am going to be evaluating is Amazon Compute Service Level Agreement. The document is a policy that explains the terms and agreement between Amazon and clients for the following services, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), Amazon Fargate for Amazon ECS (Amazon Fargate).
Elements of SLA
Elements |
Answer |
Ratings |
Justification |
Weighing Factor | |
1. The objective of the SLA is a statement/paragraph about the agreement, not the service or services it represents. |
The Amazon Compute Service Level Agreement (this “SLA”) is a policy governing the use of the Included Products and Services (listed below) by you or the entity you represent (“you”) under the terms of the AWS Customer Agreement (the “AWS Agreement”) between Amazon Web Services, Inc. and its affiliates (“AWS”, “us” or “we”) and you. This SLA applies separately to each account using the Included Products and Services. Unless otherwise provided herein, this SLA is subject to the terms of the AWS Agreement and capitalized terms will have the meaning specified in the AWS Agreement. |
4 |
The objective of the SLA is clear to users even if the user is not familiar with an SLA and it lays out the terms and agreement |
10% | |
2. For what time period is this particular SLA in effect? |
February 12, 2018 |
5 |
I looked at previous SLAs, and I noticed the SLAs are updated yearly and changes are made to them. |
2% | |
3. In describing what services are covered by the SLA, clear distinctions should be made between the service itself and support for the service. IT service support is often an IT service in and of itself. |
The product and services that are covered under the SLA are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) Amazon Fargate for Amazon ECS (Amazon Fargate) |
5 |
I gave it a 5 because the SLA described the service/ products that are provided. |
30% | |
4. What levels of availability and reliability are agreed to? |
The services are each available with a Monthly Uptime Percentage (defined below) of at least 99.99%, in each case during any monthly billing cycle (the “Service Commitment”). In the event any of the Included Products and Services do not meet the Service Commitment, the client will be eligible to receive a Service Credit. |
5 |
I rated it 5 because it thoroughly explained the availability of the service. |
55% | |
5. What levels of throughput are agreed to? |
Typically, 500-1000 mpbs, however, for Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) the throughput scale is 10+ GB per second and for Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) the throughput scale is up to 2 GB per second. |
2 |
It was difficult to find the throughput and it was not included in the SLA, so I had to do a research of my own. |
10% | |
6. Service continuity comes into play after a disaster or major disruption to the service. How long will it take to get back up and running? |
After 24 hours, service is back up and running |
1 |
I rated it 1 because since it is a cloud service, it should not be having disruptions at all. The reason clients go for cloud services is because they want to avoid the headache of having downtimes. |
45% | |
7. How is the provider assuring security and privacy for the customers and what responsibility lies with the customer? |
Cloud security at AWS is top priority. Customers pay only for the services they use, meaning that they can have the security they need, but without the upfront expenses, and at a lower cost than in an on-premises environment. Additionally, client’s data are stored in highly secure AWS data centers. |
5 |
For AWS, there is a separate webpage that explains security and privacy. Security is also one of their top priority. |
75% | |
8. Priorities for different types of incidents may be different. How does the provider of the service set priorities for resolving incidents? |
The provider set priorities for resolving incidents by stating in the agreement level the incentive that will be received if a service were to become unavailable |
1 |
The provider, AWS, did not provide levels of priorities. |
40% | |
9. What is the maximum duration before a customer can expect incident response? Resolution? |
That depends on your issue. The problems that application or service developers encounter vary widely, making it difficult to predict issue resolution times. However, they work closely with each customer to make sure each issue is resolved as soon as possible. |
1 |
A timeframe was not given regarding resolution times. Since it is a cloud service, a timeframe is needed because customer could be losing money. |
20% | |
10. Are there maintenance windows that require the service to be off line? If so, what are they? |
The duration of the maintenance varies based on the operations that are scheduled for your instances and which operations start during the maintenance window. The maintenance window is 30 minutes and up to 12 hours. |
4 |
I gave it a 4 because customer are allowed to schedule their own maintenance on the system they own and there is a timeframe that will be given/ calculated before maintenance is performed. |
20% | |
11. Are there critical business timeframes during which the customer would require the service to be online? If so, what are they? |
Customers always require the service to be online because it is a cloud service and they do not constantly have to deal with downtimes such as a server not being operational when needed. |
5 |
Since it’s a cloud service, 95% of the time it is always available to customer unless the is a problem with Amazon’s data center. |
70% | |
12. The provider collect metrics to monitor that the SLA targets are met. The provider should report these metrics periodically to the customers. That is what is referred to by SLA Reporting Periods. |
AWS starts providing metrics to customer immediately the customer purchases the feature used for metrics and monitoring service, known as Amazon CloudWatch. |
5 |
Amazon provides a monitoring service for customer in which they can monitor the service they purchase however they wish to. |
55% | |
13. Validation triggers are events that start and stop the monitoring clock. If monitoring is ongoing and automated, then validation triggers still exist. For example, monitoring of a service may be continuous and reported monthly to customers. If during the month, a major incident occurs that causes lengthy downtime, then when does the new cycle of monitoring and compiling data begin, and what triggers it? Service restored may trigger the restart of the monitoring process, or the monitoring process may start again on the first of the next month. |
Information not provided |
- |
- |
40% | |
14. How often are measurements taken to establish values for key performance indicators? For some measurements, the monitoring maybe continuous. For others, it may occur periodically. Whatever it is, it should be spelled out in the SLA. |
The Amazon CloudWatch can monitor activities continuously or periodically, depending on the settings made by the client. |
5 |
I gave it a 3 because the customers can set their preference and it can be done continually or periodically. |
20% | |
Weighted Mean |
49.2% |
Metric
Amazon Web Service (AWS) uses metrics known as Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon EBS volumes, and Amazon RDS DB instances). Clients can also enable detailed monitoring some resources, such as Amazon EC2 instances, or client can publish their own application metrics. Additionally, Amazon CloudWatch can load all the metrics in a client’s account. Metric data is kept for 15 months, enabling you to view both up-to-the-minute data and historical data.
Service quality measurement
The correct measure for my category is availability. I chose this measure because Amazon Web Service is always available for clients, it is rare they run into technical issues. The technology allows subscribers to have at their disposal a virtual cluster of computers, available all the time, through the Internet.