SLA Contract Vocabulary — Service Level Agreements
Practice the key terms in SLAs, including uptime calculations, response times, and remedies.
0 / 10 completed
1 / 10
An SLA guarantees 99.9% uptime. How much downtime does this allow per month (approximately)?
99.9% uptime allows approximately 43.8 minutes of downtime per month (0.1% of 43,800 minutes in a 30-day month).
2 / 10
The SLA includes a response time SLO of 15 minutes for P1 incidents. What does this mean?
Response time SLOs define when the vendor must respond (acknowledge), separate from resolution time SLOs.
3 / 10
An SLA includes a service credit clause. What does this provide?
Service credits are the typical remedy for SLA breaches — a percentage discount on future billing, not cash refunds.
4 / 10
The SLA excludes scheduled maintenance windows from uptime calculations. What does this mean?
Exclusions define what does not count as downtime — scheduled maintenance is a common exclusion alongside force majeure events.
5 / 10
A vendor claims force majeure for an outage caused by an AWS region failure. What are they claiming?
Force majeure clauses exempt parties from SLA obligations for events beyond reasonable control — major cloud provider failures are often cited.
6 / 10
Review Comment: 'The API response time for this endpoint is consistently above the SLA's 99th percentile SLO. Should I escalate this to the DevOps team?',
This question tests understanding of how SLOs relate to SLAs. While exceeding an SLO *indicates* a problem, it doesn't automatically trigger a service credit or escalation under most SLA agreements. The core purpose of an SLO is to drive continuous improvement, not to directly enforce contractual obligations.
7 / 10
Slack Message: '@john.doe, we're seeing a spike in 500 errors related to the billing microservice. The SLA guarantees 99.9% availability for this service. What should I do?',
This question assesses how an SLA impacts incident response. When an SLA is breached (indicated by error rates), specific actions are expected, such as notifying the responsible team and requesting a root cause analysis – not simply monitoring the situation. The key here is that the breach *mandates* a defined response.
8 / 10
PR Description: 'Implemented caching layer to improve API response times. This should reduce latency and meet the SLA's 95th percentile SLO of under 200ms for read operations.',
This question examines how proactive measures align with SLA compliance. While meeting an SLO is a positive outcome, it's not *automatic* fulfillment of the SLA. The goal of the caching layer was to *prevent* breaches in the first place – demonstrating adherence to the agreement. It's important to understand that SLAs often require proactive monitoring and performance management.
9 / 10
Standup Update: 'Yesterday, we observed a brief outage affecting the user authentication service. We've identified the issue as a temporary database connection problem and have implemented a fix. The SLA defines a response time SLO of 15 minutes for P1 incidents – were we in compliance?',
This question focuses on understanding the definition of 'compliance' in the context of an SLA. The key here is that compliance isn't just about *responding* to a problem within the defined timeframe; it's about meeting the SLO – in this case, achieving a timely response after identifying the incident. The 15-minute SLO sets the benchmark.
10 / 10
API Response: The service returned an error code of 503 – Service Unavailable. The SLA states that this should never occur for the core API endpoints. What is the likely implication?
This scenario tests understanding of a critical SLA breach. A 503 error on core API endpoints represents a significant failure in service availability. SLA agreements typically stipulate that such occurrences should be rare or non-existent, and any violations trigger specific remedies (like service credits) to compensate the user.
What will I practise in "SLA Contract Vocabulary — Service Level Agreements"?
Practice the key terms in SLAs, including uptime calculations, response times, and remedies.
How many exercises are in this module?
This module has 10 multiple-choice exercises, each with instant feedback and a full explanation of the correct answer.
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Where can I find more Legal Contracts exercises?
Browse the full Legal Contracts hub for related drills, or check the "Next up" link below to continue with a connected topic.
How is this different from reading an article on the same topic?
Articles explain vocabulary and concepts in prose; this exercise tests and reinforces that vocabulary through active recall with immediate feedback — the two work best together.
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Every exercise is written by the CoderSlingo team, drawing on real workplace English used in IT roles, then reviewed for accuracy and clarity.