SP Service Level Agreements and Management 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which SLA metric defines the maximum amount of time a service can be unavailable before violating the agreement?
- RTO
- RPO
- MTBF
- Downtime Allowance (Correct answer)
Correct answer: Downtime Allowance
Downtime Allowance is the maximum cumulative outage time permitted within a billing period (e.g., monthly) before SLA penalties are triggered.
Question 2: What is a 'service credit' in the context of an SLA violation?
- A reward points program for loyal customers
- A financial remedy provided to customers when the provider fails to meet SLA terms (Correct answer)
- A credit note for new hardware purchases
- Free support hours added to the contract
Correct answer: A financial remedy provided to customers when the provider fails to meet SLA terms
Service credits are financial remedies — typically a percentage reduction on the next invoice — that compensate customers when the provider breaches agreed service levels.
Question 3: What does RTO stand for in disaster recovery planning?
- Real-Time Operations
- Recovery Time Objective (Correct answer)
- Redundant Transfer Output
- Remote Terminal Override
Correct answer: Recovery Time Objective
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) defines the maximum acceptable time to restore a service or system after a disaster before the business incurs unacceptable losses.
Question 4: An SLA with 99.99% uptime allows for approximately how much downtime per year?
- 87.6 hours
- 8.76 hours
- 52.6 minutes (Correct answer)
- 87.6 minutes
Correct answer: 52.6 minutes
99.99% uptime (four nines) allows approximately 52.6 minutes of downtime per year across all planned and unplanned outages.
Question 5: What is an 'OLA' (Operational Level Agreement) and how does it differ from an SLA?
- An OLA is a contract with a vendor; an SLA is a contract with a customer
- An OLA governs internal team commitments that support delivery of external SLAs (Correct answer)
- An OLA covers hardware; an SLA covers software
- An OLA is legally binding; an SLA is advisory only
Correct answer: An OLA governs internal team commitments that support delivery of external SLAs
An Operational Level Agreement (OLA) is an internal agreement between support teams (e.g., NOC and engineering) that defines how they collaborate to meet the commitments in customer-facing SLAs.
Question 6: Which process is responsible for managing changes to SLA terms when customer requirements evolve?
- Incident Management
- Change Management
- Contract Review and Amendment Process (Correct answer)
- Asset Configuration Management
Correct answer: Contract Review and Amendment Process
A formal contract review and amendment process governs modifications to SLA terms, ensuring both parties agree in writing before any changes take effect.
SP Service Level Agreements and Management 1
Which SLA metric defines the maximum amount of time a service can be unavailable before violating the agreement?