How to SLA management

Overview

This page reviews the SLA Management feature located under the Business option in GroundWork Monitor.

1.0 About SLA Management

The SLA Management feature allows you to administer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and measure your business service performance. A SLA is a target of performance and quality for a service that is agreed to by a provider and client. SLAs are associated with the following components:

• Calendar - Incorporates predefined geographic locations and their holidays.
• Operation Time - Indicates the agreed days and times of operation.
• Holidays - This is the location where actual holidays are defined for use within the calendar configuration.
• Contracts - Allow for an agreement of service and contain a measured item and a target availability (e.g., the contract item could be Local Host Availability, the measured item the Host and a Service with a Target Availability set at 98 percent availability).
• Downtime - Where you can list the specific scheduled system downtimes that directly affect SLA reporting. SLA reporting provides information on monitored elements availability to ensure quality of service, and a scheduled system maintenance downtime is something you probably wouldn't want to include in the overall calculations of a report.
• SLA Reports - SLA reporting provides information on monitored elements availability to ensure quality of service. A scheduled system maintenance downtime is something you probably wouldn't want to include in the overall calculations of a report. The Business > SLA Reports option allows you produce two types of service level agreement reports, a website report to view directly or an XML file type report to download.

2.0 Creating and Managing SLAs

2.1 Creating a new SLA

A SLA contains a calendar to manage holidays such as Christmas for an associated location, and an operation time for the system operator or user of the SLA. The configuration for a SLA calendar is managed in the Holidays and Calendar tabs, and the set up for operations time in the Operation time tab.

To create a SLA, select (1) Business > SLA Management and select the (2) SLA tab.

Then click (3) Create which displays the (4) Create SLA dialog where you can enter a Description, select a Calendar for the appropriate location, and an Operation time for the new SLA.

When finished click (5) Create.

To edit an existing SLA, you would start by selecting the pencil icon on the corresponding SLA row.

Figure: Creating a SLA

2.2 Managing calendars

The Calendar option enables you to manage calendar events including holidays that land on the same date every year and moving holidays. Configuration for the calendar holidays is managed in the Holidays option discussed next.

To create a new calendar, select (1) Business > SLA Management and select the (2) Calendar tab.

Then click (3) Create which displays the (4) Create calendar dialog where you can enter a Description, and using the (5) Shift and Ctrl keys scroll through the options and select the appropriate repeating holidays and moving holidays for the SLA.

When finished click (6) Create.

To edit an existing calendar, you would start by selecting the pencil icon on the corresponding calendar row.

Figure: Managing calendars

2.3 Managing holidays

The Holidays option enables you to manage calendar holiday information such as day, month, description, and year. This option includes holidays that are for the same date every year and also moving holidays which have a different date every year. Holidays are then used in Calendars.

To create a new holiday, select (1) Business > SLA Management and select the (2) Holidays tab.

Then click (3) Create which displays the (4) Create holidays dialog where you can enter the required Day, Month and Description.

When finished click (5) Create.

Continue in the next next section of the page to create (6) moving holidays.

To edit an existing holiday, you would start by selecting the pencil icon on the corresponding holiday row.

Figure: Managing holidays

2.4 Managing operation time

Operation time allows you to set a system period during which a system should work in a manner acceptable to the operators and users. These time will show up when creating a SLA.

To create a new operation time, select (1) Business > SLA Management and select the (2) Operation time tab.

Then click (3) Create which displays the (4) Create operation time dialog where you can enter a Description, and a (5) specific time (military) for each day to be included in the operations time.

When finished click (6) Create.

To edit an existing operation time, you would start by selecting the pencil icon on the corresponding operation time row. You can also type at the top of each column to search and sort specific times.

Figure: Creating operation time

2.5 Managing Contracts

Contracts is the location where you enter the items to be measured and their target availability with is associated with a SLA.

To create a new contract, select (1) Business > SLA Management and select the (2) Contracts tab.

Then click (3) Create which displays the (4) Create contract dialog where you can enter the (5) various fields. Name is the title of your contract item, Alias for an alternative name, Customer is the name of the SLA customer (internal or external), Host and Service are your items to be measured, the Target Availability is an agreed upon percentage targeting the availability of the measured items, e.g., localhost has a 98% target for availability. The contract items are then associated with a defined SLA and therefore bundling a contract item, with holidays, and operation time. Priority is used for searching and filtering from the list of contracts.

When finished click (6) Create.

To edit an existing contract, you would start by selecting the pencil icon on the corresponding contract row. You can also type at the top of each column to search and sort specific contracts.

Figure: Defining SLA contracts

2.6 Managing Downtimes

The Downtimes option is for SLA relevant downtimes, meaning only those downtimes that will affect the SLA reporting.

To create a new SLA downtime, within Business > SLA Management, select the (1) Downtime tab.

Then click (2) Create which displays the (3) Downtime for Contract(s) dialog where you can enter the (4) various fields. The required Reason field entry is the purpose for the downtime outage, Solution is a comment for the outage, Impact describes the count of affected users. Start Time and End Time fields are for the times of the outage, Outage Type such as SCHEDULED is selected from the drop-down.

At the bottom of the dialog are the (5) contracts to be selected for downtime.

When finished click (6) Add.

To edit an existing downtime, you would start by selecting the pencil icon on the corresponding downtime row. You can also type at the top of each column to search and sort specific downtime entries.

Figure: Managing SLA downtimes