What is SLA (Service Level Agreement)?
A formal commitment defining the expected performance and availability level of a service.
Why It Matters
SLAs set clear expectations between providers and customers, with consequences for not meeting targets.
Real-World Example
An SLA guaranteeing 99.9% uptime means the service can be down for at most about 8 hours per year.
“Understanding terms like SLA (Service Level Agreement) matters because it helps you have better conversations with developers and make smarter decisions about your software. You do not need to be technical. You just need to know enough to ask the right questions.”
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Related Terms
Uptime
The percentage of time your application is available and working
Disaster Recovery
Plans and systems for restoring operations after major failures
Monitoring
Continuously observing your application and infrastructure to detect problems and understand performance.
Server
A computer that runs continuously to handle requests, store data, and serve your application to users
Serverless
A way to run code without managing your own servers, where the cloud provider handles everything
Edge Functions
Code that runs on servers close to your users around the world, rather than in one central location