Chapter 12: Azure Service-Level Agreements

In Chapter 11, Azure Cost Planning and Management, you learned about the skills that covered identifying factors that can affect costs, options to reduce and control cost, the functionality and usage of the Azure pricing calculator, and the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) calculator.

This chapter will cover Azure service-level agreements (SLAs) and the service life cycle.

This chapter aims to provide coverage of the AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals Skills Measured section: Describe Service-Level Agreements.

By the end of this chapter, you will be able to do the following:

• Describe the purpose of an Azure SLA.
• Identify actions that can impact an SLA, positively or negatively, such as Availability Zones or composite SLAs.
• Describe the service life cycle in Azure; development, private and public preview, and general availability.

To support your learning with some practical skills, we will also look at some of the resources...

Technical requirements

To carry out the hands-on labs in this chapter, you will need the following:

• Access to an internet browser.
• A Microsoft account; you can use the same account that you have used for the other exercises in this book. If you do not have a Microsoft account, you can create a free account by going to https://account.microsoft.com/account.

Azure SLAs

An SLA sets out a customer's expected level of service from their service provider; it can include responsibilities, vocabulary and terminology, claims and credit processes, service quality, and availability metrics.

Microsoft defines an SLA as Microsoft's commitments to uptime and connectivity, meaning the amount of time the services are online, available, and operational.

Microsoft provides each service with an individual SLA that will detail what is covered by the agreement and any exceptions; a percentage of the monthly fees are credited for any service that does not meet the guarantees. Previews and free services are not provided with an SLA. Information about each service's SLA can be found at the following URLs:

• https://azure.microsoft.com/support/legal/sla
• https://azurecharts.com/sla

Service availability is expressed as the uptime percentage over time; Microsoft SLAs are expressed monthly.

Availability is typically referred...

Azure service life cycle

The service life cycle defines how each Azure service that's introduced is released and made available.

New Azure services are introduced through preview services; these preview services are not provided with an SLA or support during the preview (unless there's an explicit service exception).

The service life cycle and the services you can access are as follows:

• Development: Not available to the public
• Private preview: Available only to a selected audience
• Public preview: Available to all customers
• General availability (GA): Available to all customers

Preview services can be accessed from the Azure portal; you can get the latest updates on services and their statuses from the following URLs:

• https://azure.microsoft.com/updates
• https://azurecharts.com/presence/rollout
• https://azurecharts.com/timeline

Some preview services are subject to additional terms; you can find this information by going...

Thought exercise

Returning to our digital company, MilesBetter Pizza, they have encountered some service availability issues over the last few months. They have noticed that their services have different SLAs, and they need to ensure that, in total, they always meet a target total of 99.9%. However, they are unsure how to calculate and achieve this.

First, the team at MilesBetter needs to understand the concept of a composite SLA; as we learned earlier in this chapter, this means that when you combine services, the overall SLA is lower than the individual highest SLA on one of the services. This is because each service that you add increases the probability of failure and increases complexity. The following example illustrates how a composite SLA is calculated across the services:

• Service 1 = 99.9%
• Service 2 = 99.95%
• Service 3 = 99.99%
• Service 4 = 99.99%

The calculation looks as follows, which shows that the target SLA will not be met:

0.999 x 0.9995...

Hands-on exercise

To support your learning with some practical skills, we will use some of the resources we covered in this chapter by performing some hands-on exercises.

The following exercises will be carried out:

• Exercise 1 – exploring the SLA for a service
• Exercise 2 – exploring Azure Preview features

Getting started

To get started with these hands-on exercises, you will need an Azure subscription that can create and delete resources in the subscription. You can use an existing account that you have created as part of the exercises from any chapter in this book. Alternatively, you can create a free Azure account at https://azure.microsoft.com/free.

This free Azure account provides the following:

• 12 months of free services
• $200 credit to explore Azure for 30 days
• 25+ services that are always free

Exercise 1 – exploring the SLA for a service

This section will look at the resources we can use to gather information...

Summary

This chapter covered some of the AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals exam skills in the Describe Azure cost management and Service Level Agreements area.

In this chapter, you learned how to describe the purpose of an Azure SLA and the service life cycle in Azure.

The skills you have gained in this chapter should have provided you with the confidence to explain, discuss the functionality, and use the following aspects with a business or technical audience: the purpose of an Azure SLA, actions that can impact an SLA either positively or negatively, such as Availability Zones or composite SLAs, and the service life cycle in Azure for development, private and public preview, and general availability.

Then, we concluded this chapter with a thought exercise.

The next chapter will cover exam prep practice tests.

Additional information and study references

This section provides links to additional exam information and study references:

• Exam AZ-900: Microsoft Azure fundamentals: https://docs.microsoft.com/learn/certifications/exams/az-900
• Exam AZ-900: skills outline: https://query.prod.cms.rt.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE3VwUY
• Microsoft Learn: Azure Fundamentals – Describe Azure cost management and service level agreements: https://docs.microsoft.com/learn/paths/az-900-describe-azure-cost-management-service-level-agreements

Skills check

Answer the following questions to test what you have learned in this chapter:

1. What is Microsoft's SLA definition?
2. What happens if Microsoft does not meet its SLA for services?
3. What is the minimum SLA Microsoft provides?
4. List two actions that will decrease your SLA.
5. List three different ways to increase your SLA.
6. List two actions that won't increase your SLA.
7. Where can information on each SLA be found?
8. What is a composite SLA?
9. What are the three phases of an Azure service life cycle?
10. When does an Azure service become accessible to the public in the service's life cycle, along with an SLA and support?