Chapter 17

Employing Service Level Agreements

In This Chapter

Defining service level agreements

Defining a hybrid service level agreement

Comparing SLAs across a hybrid world

The problem of coming up with the right level of service for the right task at the right time is an age-old problem in the computing world. It’s no wonder. If you ask the typical computer user if he wants the systems and applications to have incredibly rapid performance with no downtime, the answer will always be, “Of course.” However, in the real world, there’s always a balance among performance, uptime, and costs.

This tension is the same in a cloud environment, with this difference: In a cloud, you’re not dealing with a single system that you control; you’re typically dealing with a hybrid environment that includes public and private computing services. This chapter explains what it means to manage the level of service in a hybrid world.