6 / 9 Requirements & Scoping

Tighter Than The Contract

Your enterprise contract promises 99.95 percent monthly availability and pays a 10 percent service credit if you miss it. During planning, the team sets the internal availability SLO to 99.95 percent as well, reasoning that one number is simpler for everyone. What should they do instead?

A

Drop the internal SLO entirely and page whenever the contractual budget reaches 100 percent consumed

B

Set the internal SLO tighter than 99.95, so the error budget runs out and the alerts fire while the contractual number is still safe

C

Set the internal SLO looser, around 99.9, so engineers are not chasing a number the platform cannot hold

D

Keep the two equal: an SLO and an SLA measuring the same thing should be the same number, and the credit is the natural consequence of missing it