Four Common Metrics Found in SLAs

With the amount of data traversing through an organization, what metrics should staff be focused on? Below are four common metrics that I’ve maintained to uphold customer/partner facing SLAs. Understanding the difference between these metrics and how they are measured can help you ensure you meet the needs of your customers and related regulatory requirements.

Availability

  • Mean Time to Failure (MTTF): refers to the average amount of time a system or component operates before experiencing a failure. This metric is useful for understanding the reliability of a system over time.
  • Mean Time to Repair (MTTR): refers to the average amount of time it takes to repair a failed component or system. This metric is useful for understanding how quickly a system can be restored to normal operation after a failure.


Data Integrity

  • Recovery Point Objective (RPO): refers to the maximum acceptable data loss during a disaster. It is expressed in terms of time, such as “the maximum acceptable data loss is four hours.” This metric is useful for understanding how much data a system can afford to lose in the event of a disaster.
  • Recovery Time Objective (RTO): refers to the maximum acceptable time it takes to restore a system to normal operation after a disaster. This metric is useful for understanding how quickly a system needs to be restored in order to meet the needs of the business.


Closing

I’ve reviewed some of the most common metrics I’ve found in SLAs. Most importantly, you’ll first want to determine what your SLAs require. SLOs are targets or goals that an organization sets for itself (internally) in terms of the performance and reliability of a system. An internal SLO with aggressively low MTTR and MTFF can provide a buffer before violating SLAs.

Testing backups can help ensure that an organization can meet its RPO and RTO objectives. By regularly testing and verifying the integrity of backups, organizations can be confident that they have the necessary data to recover from a disaster.

In summary, MTTR, MTTF, RPO, and RTO are important metrics for understanding the performance and reliability of a system. Testing backups and defining SLOs and SLAs can help organizations measure and improve these metrics so you can continue to deliver business.