ABSTRACT
Earlier in this book, we identified the key SLA attributes : uptime, recovery, provisioning and cost. These are the components of SLAs that you should prepare to capture and periodically review with your business unit customers.
Uptime. Your IT staff should track planned and unplanned downtime, including which system, which department, which application and root cause. Plan on a downstream pareto analysis to improve your quality. The pareto process will expose chronic problems if there is one specific array that keeps failing, a chronic power or cooling situation, or a network- or application-related problem. A pareto analysis will bring the recurring problem to the surface so that it can be addressed.
Recovery. This attribute can be easily tracked by using IT trouble tickets to capture requests, including timestamping both the receipt and the resolution. A trouble ticket report specific to recovery tickets will enable you to demonstrate your RPO and RTO, or raise any problem areas so they can be addressed.
Provisioning. This attribute can also easily be tracked by IT trouble tickets. Capture the initial request, and timestamp it. Then add the requested capacity, and timestamp it, too.
Cost. Use a configuration log to track the capacities consumed by different departments
