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SLA vs. SLO vs. SLI
2 min read
SLO, SLA, and/or SLI are phrases that you may be familiar with if you work for a company. These phrases have one thing in common: they can be used to monitor user service-related business goals a little more precisely by accounting for those actions. The definitions of SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs, as well as their similarities and differences, will all be briefly covered in this article. Upon completion, you ought to comprehend each one more fully and be able to employ them with more accuracy.

What is SLA?

SLA stands for Service Level Agreement. A Service Level Agreement is a formal contract between a service provider and a client that specifies the agreed-upon level of service, performance metrics, responsibilities, and remedies in case of non-compliance. It serves as a legally binding document that outlines the services to be delivered, the desired quality standards, and the consequences if those standards are not met.

You can find out more about it through this: Understanding Service Level Agreements

What is SLO?

SLO can be mentioned interchangeably with SLA sometimes. But, they are still different at some point.

SLO stands for Service Level Objective. A Service Level Objective is an agreement within an SLA about a specific metric, for example, uptime or response time. So, if the SLA is the formal agreement between you and your customer, SLOs are the individual promises you're making to that customer. So as you can see, SLA contains one or more SLOs.

And, another key difference between them is SLA is more for the “outside” while SLO is more for the “inside” of a company. SLO is the thing your company try to reach to commit to what your legal team has worked with customers in SLA.

What is SLI?

The last one is SLI.

SLI stands for Service Level Indicator. If an SLA contains one or some SLOs, then an SLO needs SLI as an actual measurement to calculate if this works or not. SLI works at a given time. And it is very crucial for any SLI.

SLA vs. SLO vs. SLI Example

For a better understanding, let’s dive into one example.

Imagine your legal team writes an SLA that commits that the database should be available for your customers 99.5% of the time. So your company’s SLO must try to meet 99.5% uptime for that database. SLI comes as a keep-track tool measurement for your company. If it is over 99.5%, the SLA passes. In contrast, the SLA is not being met.

This is the end of the article, hope that it can give you the most basic information about SLA, SLO and SLI with their distinctions. Do not forget to subscribe to our blog to get the latest news! Wish you all the best!

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