it’s not enough just to be connected

Connectivity, availability, and reliability are intrinsic factors to the data network. Connectivity, for most companies, will ensure the progress of all their operations, whether they are simpler or more critical, involving all areas of their functional structures.

Although this factor is the most essential of all, it is important to emphasize that it is not the only one to be considered, an overload of a link or even an unavailability, periodic or not, can considerably harm the productivity of the business, in addition, these unwanted behaviors in the network in the short or medium term, may present relevant non-compliance with the pre-established service-level agreements between the company and its respective suppliers.

SLA AND ITS METRICS

In general, the term SLA, which stands for “Service Level Agreement”, is a contract established between two institutions, the provider and the beneficiary of the service. Despite being generic, this concept is mostly used in the IT market, and can be addressed in several service delivery scenarios, such as internet link contract, WAN technologies (such as MPLS for example), network devices, technical consulting services and the like.

The parameters defined in the contract are usually associated with performance factors, metrics that should, in most cases, be monitored objectively, that is, with concrete data for future comparisons with the agreements of the current contract. As an example, we can cite the monthly availability value in percentage terms of a BGP peer, either for an MPLS link or for an ISP that has transit with an operator, for example.

SLA metrics monitoring

In this sense, it is essential to use a monitoring solution that monitors all predefined metrics in the contract in a dynamic way, but also generates periodic reports on these indicators for SLA compliance verification.

The flexibility to create these metrics in a monitoring environment is also another extremely relevant point, each contract has its specificities and tracking these details is essential. As well as, by creating variables that store the values relative to these metrics and generate graphs, reports and alarms. In addition, the greater the collection possibilities, the better the versatility and breadth of the monitoring scenario.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

Therefore, one can see the importance of a flexible monitoring system for tracking specific SLA metrics for each contract. With SLAview, one of the monitoring solutions developed by Telcomanager, it is possible to follow different types of indicators in a personalized way, generate periodic reports, create alarms, dashboards, NOC graphs and many other possibilities.

With that in mind, Telcomanager, Latin America’s leader in the software network management sector, in the market since 2002, with a unique and innovative methodology, provides intelligent solutions for data monitoring to give complete visibility to the customer’s infrastructure. This allows your company to keep track of the main aspects of your network.

Posted in 06/03/2022