Defining Service Level Agreements

You define a service level agreement (SLA) by creating an SLA policy. Depending on the type of SLA policy you choose, you might have to perform a set of tasks before applying the policy. The three types include the following:

Fixed Value - This is the most basic SLA. It evaluates performance across all transaction, service, endpoint, and/or operation usage. It cannot be used for consumer usage. It does not take historical performance into account.
Baseline - This SLA lets you specify performance objectives relative to historical performance measurements. It evaluates performance across all transaction, service, endpoint, and/or operation usage. It cannot be used for consumer usage.
Usage - This SLA evaluates performance on a per-consumer basis. Alerts are issued only for consumers for whom performance deviates from the performance objectives, and you can monitor performance for individual consumers. This type of SLA can be used with transactions.

Defining a Fixed-Value SLA

Decide whether you want to create an SLA for a service or for a transaction:

To create an SLA for services, choose Create > SLAPolicy > Service SLA, and then choose the fixed value type from the submenu.

To create an SLA for transactions, choose Create > SLAPolicy > Transaction SLA, and then choose the fixed value type from the submenu.

The SLA policy tool opens.
Specify the evaluation period.
Select the objectives: click Choose Instruments, and click the checkbox for each instrument you want to use for setting up performance objectives, and click OK.
Click Choose Operations, pick the operations on which you would like to set up performance objectives, and click OK.

The SLA policy tool should now display one performance objective for each instrument that you picked.

(In order to choose operations, you must open the tool by first selecting an object and then choosing Create > SLAPolicy for selected_object.)
Specify warning and failure values for your performance objectives.

If the objective is for an operation, the values pertain to only that operation. If the objective is for a service or endpoint, the values pertain to the total or average for all operations on the service or endpoint (total if the instrument is a counter, such as Traffic; average if the instrument is an averaging instrument, such as Average Response Time).
Use the Criteria section to choose the objects to which the policy should apply.
Preview the objects in the Criteria section.
Click Apply.

Defining a Baseline SLA

Before setting your baselines, you can delete previously set baselines by running retrieveObjectData with the -delete option set.

Before you can define a baseline SLA, you must do the following to set the baseline:

Run traffic and identify a time period that provides a good selection of baseline data.
Export the baseline data: Run the retrieveObjectData CLI command to retrieve the performance history that you want to use as a baseline for your SLA.
Using the output file of the retrieveObjectData CLI command as an input file, run the setBaseLines CLI command to set the baselines for your SLA.

To define a baseline SLA

Decide whether you want to create an SLA for a service or for a transaction:

To create an SLA for transactions, choose Create > SLAPolicy > Transaction SLA, and then choose the baseline type from the submenu.

To create an SLA for services, choose Create > SLAPolicy > Service SLA, and then choose the baseline type from the submenu.

The SLA policy tool opens.
Specify the evaluation period.
Select the objectives: click Choose Instruments, and click the checkbox for each instrument you want to use for setting up performance objectives, and click OK

The SLA policy tool should now display one performance objective for each instrument that you picked.
Specify warning and failure values for your performance objectives.

If the objective is for an operation, the values pertain to only that operation. If the objective is for a service or endpoint, the values pertain to the total or average for all operations on the service or endpoint (total if the instrument is a counter, such as Traffic; average if the instrument is an averaging instrument, such as Average Response Time).
Use the Criteria section to choose the objects to which the policy should apply.
Preview the objects in the Criteria section.
Click Apply.

Defining a Usage SLA

Before you can define a usage SLA you must map messages to consumers and enable segmentation for the given transaction.

To create a usage SLA for transactions, choose Create > SLAPolicy > Transaction SLA, and then choose the usage type from the submenu.

The SLA policy tool opens.
Specify which consumers the policy should apply to:
1. By default, the policy applies to all consumers. To restrict the policy to a subset of consumers, click all consumers in the system and choose a subset of consumers.
2. Then click the Filter button that appears and use the Set Filters dialog box to specify your subset of consumers.
Specify the evaluation period.
Select the objectives: click Choose Instruments, and click the checkbox for each instrument you want to use for setting up performance objectives, and click OK.

The SLA policy tool should now display one performance objective for each instrument that you picked.
Click Choose Operations, pick the operations on which you would like to set up performance objectives, and click OK.

In order to choose operations, you must open the tool by first selecting an object and then choosing Create > SLAPolicy for selected_object.

If the objective is for an operation, the values pertain to only that operation. If the objective is for a service or endpoint, the values pertain to the total or average for all operations on the service or endpoint (total if the instrument is a counter, such as Traffic; average if the instrument is an averaging instrument, such as Average Response Time).
Specify warning and failure values for your performance objectives.
Use the Criteria section to choose the objects to which the policy should apply.
Preview the objects in the Criteria section.
Click Apply.