01 February 2016
Most data centres promise 100 per cent availability and resilience. But what happens when an outage occurs?
Under the typical SLA, the standard service credit of five per cent of the monthly fee kicks in, rising as the outage continues until typically reaching the 30 per cent cap.
Given the complete standardisation across the DC market, it is little wonder that just a fraction of companies look to negotiate the SLA and, if possible, push for a small percentage service credit increase.
But is this really good enough? When even a ten second outage can have significant financial and reputation ramifications, just what is the value
of a five per cent monthly rebate?
The problem is that companies have had little leeway for negotiation in a market that has got away with vanilla SLAs for too long. Why are DC providers not delivering SLAs that match their much-vaunted investment in resilience and availability? Is it because, perhaps, when you look beyond the headline promises, that resilience actually looks a little more fragile than at first glance?
Of course, there are degrees of resilience and availability. For instance, while one DC can boast failover generators should the main grid fail, another can offer two separate power lines from two separate grid supplies. Given such divergence in actual resilience and quality, isn’t it time the market reflected this difference in the SLA?
One radically different approach is the evolution towards hourly charging. A pay-as-you-go service means businesses are charged on an hourly basis for the amount of power used, with itemised billing to enable them to accurately monitor their power consumption.
Another new model is to provide a choice of SLAs – a standard version offering the traditional service credits, and a top-level agreement providing one year of free service credit if 100 per cent power availability is lost to a rack.
A vanilla SLA across the market makes no sense. And the fact that just 10 per cent of companies look to negotiate that SLA simply reflects the frustration many feel about the lack of choice. Changing the small print will ensure firms finally match resilience and availability promises to business reality.