Establishing service levels
When you implement Splunk software to support services, you might be asked to establish service-level objectives (SLOs), service-level agreements (SLAs), case priority levels, or incident response times to help track and manage service availability.
Service-level definitions provide all teams and organizations assurance that Splunk operations and response models meet their needs without impacting other areas.
You can use our guidelines and templates to create service levels for your organization. Use the examples provided or use them as a baseline for establishing your own.
Guidelines for implementing service level definitions
There are many factors to consider when making a service-level commitment.
Don't over-commit.
- Consider what might be too fast for delivery.
- Don't make a commitment that's unreasonable or unfair to your team members.
Don't under-commit.
- The requester should never feel that the response time is unreasonably long.
- Be as accommodating as possible when setting goals for turnaround
Consider the time it takes to gather the necessary information.
- Many types of requests require follow-up with the requester. Recognize that there may be a waiting period for this additional information.
- Have reasonable expectations when requesting additional information. Make sure to communicate your expectations to the requester.
- The requester should be aware that a slow response time will have an impact on expected turnaround time.
Think about the process for incoming requests.
- Think about your engagement model for incoming requests. Optimize the request process so teams can work together effectively.
- Create a process that is straightforward and effective.
SLO templates
SLOs provide expectations for maintenance planning, release planning, and communication with business partners. You can divide SLOs into administrative tasks (day-to-day activities) and implementation tasks.
The following templates provide suggestions. You can adapt them to commitments that work for your organization.
| Administrative SLOs (day-to-day activities) | Target |
|---|---|
| Delete new user | 5 business days |
| Add new user | 5 business days |
| Elevate user permissions | 25 business days |
| Dashboard creation support | 10 business days |
| Report generation support | 5 business days |
| Alert creation and changes support | 5 business days |
| Create a new Active Directory group for access
(External dependencies) |
25 business days |
| Create new role | 15 business days |
| Implementation SLOs | Target |
|---|---|
| First response to new support request |
1 business day |
| Data ingest (standard add-on) | 5 business days |
| Data ingest (custom add-on) | 10 business days |
| New app install | 1 business day |
| Universal forwarder deployment
(Does not include change control SLO) |
10 business days |
| Data source monitor (http, WMI, TCP/UDP) | 2 business days |
| Implement new global knowledge object | 1 business day |
| Upload data into Splunk
(for example, static log, file, CSV) |
5 business days |
SLA templates
SLAs are key service definitions for platform availability and incident response.
The following templates provide suggestions. You can adapt them to commitments that work for your organization.
| SLAs | Target |
|---|---|
| Platform availability | 99.9% uptime for all core services (< 8.76 hours unplanned downtime per year) |
| Incident first response | Based on priority |
| Incident status update | Based on priority |
| Restore loss of data feed (ingestion) | 1 business day |
| Restore universal forwarder not reporting (standard) | 5 business days |
| Restore universal forwarder not reporting (mission critical applications) | 1 business day |
Case priority levels
Case priorities can vary by service or source.
The following templates provide suggestions. You can adapt them to commitments that work for your organization.
| Case priority level | Definition |
|---|---|
| P1 | A mission critical outage for which there is no workaround. This may be a complete service outage of a core service. |
| P2 | A mission critical outage for which a less than ideal workaround exists. This may be a partial service outage of a core service. |
| P3 | An outage or issue impacting a single user. |
| P4 | Standard service requests or routine changes. For example, access requests, data onboarding, app installation, etc. |
Incident response times
| Incident response | P1 | P2 | P3 | P4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First response | 1 hour | 2 hours | 4 hours | 1 business day |
| Communicated updates | Every 2 hours | Every 4 hours | Every business day | Every 5 business days |
| Resolution time | Within 4 hours | Within 2 business days | Within 3 business days | Agreement with the customer |
| Business hours | 24 hours / 7 days per week | 8:00am to 5:00pm / 5 days per week
excluding holidays |
8:00am to 5:00pm / 5 days per week
excluding holidays |
8:00am to 5:00pm / 5 days per week
excluding holidays |
Key terms
- Mission critical. An outage impacting revenue, ability to hit agreed SLA/OLA, or a noted mission-critical data source or app.
- Core service. Indexing, Searching, or Alerting.
- Routine change. A low-impact, low-risk change not requiring a change review.
- Emergency change. A change required to resolve a P1/P2 condition.
- Service request. A request to add new capacity of lower complexity than a project, for example, new inputs or new add-on installs.
More resources
For more information on Splunk Cloud Platform SLAs, see Splunk Cloud Service Level Agreements.