What is SLA?

SLA (Service Level Agreement) is an agreement on the quality level of the provided service between the service provider and the client. The SLA specifies concrete metrics and guarantees that the service must ensure, for example:

• Availability (uptime) — for example, the service should be available 99.9% of the time in a month.
• Response time — the maximum response time to a request.
• Recovery time — the maximum time to resolve incidents.
• Support and escalation — response times to inquiries.

The SLA serves as a basis for evaluating service quality and may include penalties or compensations for non-compliance with the conditions. In the context of software development and operation, the SLA helps establish expectations and standards for the system's operation.