Azure Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a contract between Microsoft Azure and its customers that specifies the level of availability and uptime guarantee for Azure services. SLAs provide a framework for measuring and ensuring the quality of Azure services, which helps build trust between Microsoft and its customers.
The Azure SLA offers different levels of service commitments, which are based on the type of Azure service and the region where it is deployed. Microsoft commits to meeting the SLA for each service it offers, which varies from 99.9% to 99.99% uptime.
Azure SLA also defines the terms and conditions under which customers can claim service credits or compensation in the event of service unavailability or downtime beyond the specified service level commitments. Customers can claim a service credit if the Azure service fails to meet its availability commitment during a monthly billing cycle.
The amount of the service credit varies depending on the Azure service and the level of availability commitment specified in the SLA. The credit is applied to the customer’s account for the following billing cycle, and it is based on the percentage of the total billing charges for the Azure service that did not meet the SLA commitment.
Azure SLA applies to most Azure services, including compute, networking, storage, databases, and security services. However, some Azure services, such as preview services, free services, and services that are not covered by the SLA, are excluded from the service level commitments.
Here are the SLAs for some of the most popular Azure services:
- Azure Virtual Machines: Microsoft offers an SLA of 99.9% for VMs deployed in a single zone and 99.95% for VMs deployed in two or more zones within the same region.
- Azure App Service: Microsoft offers an SLA of 99.95% for the Standard, Premium, and Premium V2 plans of the Azure App Service.
- Azure SQL Database: Microsoft offers an SLA of 99.99% for the Business Critical tier of Azure SQL Database.
- Azure Cosmos DB: Microsoft offers an SLA of 99.999% for read and write operations for multi-region accounts.
- Azure Blob Storage: Microsoft offers an SLA of 99.9% availability for the Blob Storage service.
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Microsoft offers an SLA of 99.5% for the AKS service.
- Azure Functions: Microsoft offers an SLA of 99.95% for the Azure Functions service.
In summary, Azure Service Level Agreement provides customers with a reliable and predictable cloud service with guaranteed uptime and availability commitments. It also offers service credits as compensation in case of service unavailability or downtime beyond the specified service level commitments.