Creating and Working with Service-Level Agreements › How to Create and Work with Service-Level Agreements › Define a Service-Level Agreement

Define a Service-Level Agreement

You define a service-level agreement when creating or editing a service. Each SLA is specific to a service, and a service can only have one SLA.

Follow these steps:

1. Open the Operations Console, and complete one of the following actions:
   • Select Tools, Create New Service.
   • Right-click a service in the Navigation pane and select Edit Service.

   The Service Modeler opens.

2. Click the SLA tab.
3. Enter a name in the Service Level Objective (SLO) Name field, an optional description in the Description field, and select the Enabled check box to immediately enable the SLA after you save it.
4. Perform the following steps:
   1. Indicate whether to base the SLA on Health, Quality, Risk, or Availability. For an explanation of these terms, see the Administration Guide.
   2. Select the threshold level. For example, for Health the threshold levels are Minor, Major, Critical, Down, and Unknown. If you select Critical, any period of time when health becomes Critical, Down, or Unknown, it is considered a service outage and is one factor used to determine whether the SLA is violated.
   3. Select Percent or Seconds and enter a value to determine how long the threshold level must be breached to trigger a violation.

      Note: The Seconds value must be greater than 0 and less than 1000000.

5. Click Select for the SLO Period.
6. Perform one of the following steps:
   • Click Create to create a new schedule for the SLA time period. Continue with Step 7.
   • Select an existing schedule and click OK. Continue with Step 9.

     A description of the selected period appears in the SLO Period pane.

7. (New SLA period only) Complete the Create Period dialog and click OK.

   Start Date

   Specifies the date on which to begin calculating the service SLA status. Depending on your selections in the Recurrence pane, the period may not start on the exact start date. For example, if you define a start date of September 15th with a monthly recurrence that starts on the 17th of every month, the period does not start until September 17th.

   Recurrence

   Specifies how long the SLA period lasts, and when it expires. Select from the following options:

   Daily

   Specifies that the period recurs after a specified number of days. For example, you can create a period that renews every three days. A daily period starts for the first time on the specified start date.

   Weekly

   Specifies that the period recurs after a specified number of weeks and begins on a specific day. For example, you can create a period that starts on the first Monday after the specified start date and renews every two weeks.

   Monthly

   Specifies that the period recurs after a specified number of months and begins on a specific day of the month. For example, you can create a period that starts on the fifth day of the month after the specified start date and renews every three months.

   Yearly

   Specifies that the period recurs after a specified number of years and begins on a specific month and day. For example, you can create a period that starts on January 5 (the first occurrence of this day after the start date) and renews every two years.

   Note: If the Start Date and the Recurrence date are the same, the recurrence begins the following year. If you want a yearly SLO Period recurrence to begin this year, then set a Recurrence date at least one day after the Start Date. For example, if the Start Date is Jan 1, 2013 and the Recurrence date is Jan 1, the first recurrence is Jan 1, 2014. However, if you set the Recurrence Date to Jan 2, the first recurrence happens on Jan 2, 2013.

   Note: For all recurrence options, select either No Expiration for the period to recur indefinitely or enter a Schedule End Date when SLA evaluation stops.

8. (New SLA period only) Select the created SLA period and click OK.

   A description of the selected period appears in the SLO Period pane.

9. (Optional) Select the Other option in the Business Hours pane to specify business hours to restrict SLA evaluation, and perform one of the following actions:
   • Click Create. Continue with Step 10.
   • Select an available schedule, if any, and click . Continue with Step 11.
10. (New business hours only) Enter the following information in the Create Business Hours dialog and click OK:

    Start Date

    Specifies when the business hours schedule starts. Depending on your selections in the Recurrence pane, the period may not start on the exact start date. For example, if you define a start date of September 15th with a monthly recurrence that starts every week on Monday, the period does not start until the first Monday after September 15th.

    Time

    Specifies the daily business hours time interval. These values must be rounded to 30 minute intervals.

    Recurrence

    Specifies how long the business hours period lasts, and when it expires. Select from the following options:

    Daily

    Specifies that the period spans every weekday, every weekend day, or every day of the week. For example, you can create a business hours schedule from 9:00-5:00 on Monday through Friday.

    Weekly

    Specifies that the period starts every week on a specific day.

    For all recurrence options, you must either select No Expiration for the period to recur indefinitely or enter a Schedule End Date when the business hours period stops.

    Note: You do not have to synchronize the SLA period and business hours recurrence types or recurrence days. For example, you can use a monthly SLA period with weekly business hours. If you define an SLA period that starts on Monday and a business hours schedule that starts on Wednesday, the SLA evaluation begins when the business hours begin.

    The created schedule appears in the Current Schedules pane.

    Note: If you enter multiple business hours, the product verifies that the hours do not overlap.

11. Click OK.

    The service-level agreement is defined.