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 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.