FragSwitch: Hosting Tutorial: Uptime (Part One) - FragSwitch

This week we’re going to be talking about Service Level Agreements, this is the first part of our Uptime tutorial.

What is an SLA?
A Service Level Agreement is a contract between you and your hosting provider.It sets out the provider’s responsibilities for maintaining the availability of your website and includes the amount of credit (normally) will be given if your site isn’t available. Our SLA is built into our Terms of Service, but a versionin plain English (rather than Legalise) is provided separately.

Terms of an SLA
These agreements can be divided into two parts: Uptime percentage and credit amount; and terms of credit.

The first is quite simple, uptime is measured in apercentage, 100% being up for the entire time that month, bear in mind a serverthat has 100% uptime will be available 30x24 hours (for an average month) so it being down for one hour, reduces the percentage to 99.9% (rounded up). It is important that you read and understand this section, as not all hosts have 100% uptime guarantees and may not give you credit for an hour of downtime.

The terms of credit will define what restrictions are in place on the Service Level Agreement. Common terms include that the host will not be liable for downtime it hasn’t caused, or had no control over, although some hosts will recognise this as downtime and credit anyway. Another common term is for Terms of Service violations and downtime caused by suspension of your website.

What can you do if your host doesn’t honour the agreement?
In the United Kingdom, this may be considered a breach of contract as the company has failed to adhere to the contract both you and the provider agreed. It is, however, worth contacting your local Ombudsman; in the UK this is Consumer Direct (www.consumerdirect.gov.uk) or The Office of Fair Trading (www.oft.gov.uk)

As always, feel free to contact us if you have questions, comments or suggestions for another tutorial.