SLA
also: Service Level Agreement
SLA (Service Level Agreement) is a formal contract between a service provider and customer that specifies guaranteed performance metrics, uptime requirements, and remedies if those standards are not met.
An SLA defines measurable service standards such as uptime percentage (e.g., 99.9%), response time, or availability windows. It establishes expectations and accountability between parties.
For example, a web hosting provider might guarantee 99.99% uptime with automatic credits if actual uptime falls below that threshold. In enterprise Linux environments, SLAs often specify response times for support tickets, patch deployment timelines, or system performance benchmarks.
SLAs are critical in DevOps and cloud infrastructure planning, as they inform decisions about redundancy, failover systems, and monitoring requirements needed to meet promised levels of service.