SLA (Service Level Agreement)

An SLA (service level agreement) is the contractual commitment a data center or service provider makes about measurable service quality. Most importantly it covers power availability, but also cooling parameters, network uptime, and support response times. Colocation SLAs for Tier III-class facilities commonly guarantee 99.99-100% power availability to dual-corded equipment; a '100% SLA' means any outage triggers remedies rather than claiming outages are impossible. Remedies are typically service credits, often 5-10% of monthly fees per outage increment, capped at one month's fees — rarely covering actual business losses. Cooling SLAs specify temperature and humidity bands (usually referencing ASHRAE ranges), and remote-hands SLAs specify response times. Scrutinizing measurement methods, exclusions (maintenance windows, force majeure), and credit caps is a standard part of colocation contract review.