The devil, as they say, is in the details. When we announced the SLA for our VPDC a few weeks ago we got great reviews for pushing the envelope and standing up to enterprise grade availability requirements, but even those writing the best reviews wanted to see the details. Well the lawyers are done, and here’s the nitty gritty detail. We’ve worked hard to keep it understandable and predictable, so users know exactly where they stand.

3Tera AppLogic VPDC Service Level Agreement (SLA)

VPDC Availability Goal

3Tera’s goal is to make each Virtual Private Data Center (”VPDC”) that you obtain from 3Tera Available 100% of the time.

Availability Measurement and Remedies

If, as a result of any Covered Event(s), a Covered VPDC is not Available at least 99.999% of the time in any full calendar month, 3Tera will issue a credit to your account. If the affected VPDC was Available at least 99.9% of that month, the credit will be 10% of the Service Fee for that VPDC for that month; otherwise it will be 25% of that fee.

3Tera will monitor the availability of each VPDC, and will automatically issue any credit that is due. In addition, you may report an instance of unavailability to 3Tera, via our helpdesk, within 30 days of the date it occurred, providing the date and approximate time period of the unavailability.
Definitions

“Service Fee”: the monthly (recurring) fee paid to 3Tera for the affected VPDC. “Service Fee” does not include the fee for any other VPDC, or for support or any other services.

“Available”: a Covered VPDC is deemed Available during any period in which its VPDC controller is able to serve network requests, as indicated by 3Tera’s monitoring system or the VPDC’s system log.

“Covered VPDC” means a VPDC that, throughout the relevant month, was: (i) covered by 3Tera’s Assured Success Plan; and (ii) running only on servers located in the United States.

“Covered VPDC” does not include: (a) a single-server VPDC (”development grid”) or (b) a VPDC that, at the time it became not Available, was not running in a configuration then recommended by 3Tera.

“Covered Event”: any action, inaction, event, cause or circumstance other than the following: (i) an act or omission of you or your customer, or of any other third party not under the control of 3Tera or the Data Center; (ii) equipment, applications or systems not owned or controlled by, or services not provided by, 3Tera or the Data Center; (iii) an act of God, war, civil unrest, flood or fire; power outage lasting longer than 12 hours; internet outage, congestion or denial of service attack; or any other cause beyond the reasonable control of 3Tera or the Data Center; (iv) scheduled maintenance (including upgrades) of hardware or software, including AppLogic; (v) unscheduled maintenance required to install an urgent security update; (vi) suspension of your account or VPDC (e.g., for non-payment) or (vii) unavailability of any of your Applications or Appliances, even if occurring after an instance of unavailability of the VPDC.

“Data Center” means a person or entity, selected by 3Tera, that provides server hosting, internet connectivity and other services in connection with the affected VPDC.

Additional Terms and Conditions

1. Each credit will be issued to your account within 30 days of the end of the month for which the credit is due. Cash refunds are not available.

2. For you to be eligible for a credit, your account must be in good standing from the first day of the month for which the credit is due, until the date the credit is issued. For example, you may not have any past due invoices, or otherwise have breached any applicable EULA or Terms of Service.

3. This document states 3Tera’s sole liability and your entire remedy for any failure to meet the VPDC Availability Goal and any VPDC downtime or unavailability.

4. 3Tera reserves the right to revise or terminate this Service Level Agreement upon 60 days notice.

(SLA rev. 1-2009-03-30)

Late last week we became aware of a group of vendors promoting an Open Cloud Manifesto from a Microsoft blog post. A great deal has already been written about the manifesto and a bit of controversy it created on ZDnet, eweek, cnet, Silicon Alley Insider, and others.

The manifesto attempts to broadly define cloud computing, the issues it can create for users, and a list of principles the supporters suggest cloud vendors should adhere to:

1. Cloud providers must work together to ensure that the challenges to cloud adoption (security, integration, portability, interoperability, governance/management, metering/monitoring) are addressed through open collaboration and the appropriate use of standards.

2. Cloud providers must not use their market position to lock customers into their particular platforms and limiting (sic) their choice of providers.

3. Cloud providers must use and adopt existing standards wherever appropriate. The IT industry has invested heavily in existing standards and standards organizations; there is no need to duplicate or reinvent them.

4. When new standards (or adjustments to existing standards) are needed, we must be judicious and pragmatic to avoid creating too many standards. We must ensure that standards promote innovation and do not inhibit it.

5. Any community effort around the open cloud should be driven by customer needs, not merely the technical needs of cloud providers, and should be tested or verified against real customer requirements.

6. Cloud-computing standards organizations, advocacy groups, and communities should work together and stay coordinated, making sure that efforts do not conflict or overlap.

In the end, the manifesto simply puts in words the guiding principles 3tera has held to for the past three and a half years. We’ve embraced numerous existing standards, used open source where possible, introduced no new APIs, worked with existing management systems, ensured data portability, made sure users have a choice of providers across the globe, posted all our docs and specs online from day one, and when invited we’ve participated in interoperability discussions. We’re pleased these values are being embraced.

However, the manifesto is not without issue. First, the major cloud service providers weren’t participants in it’s creation, which raises questions about it’s viability. Second, as pointed out in the Microsoft post, acceptance is required “as is” with no acceptance of feedback. Third, it’s unclear exactly who controls the manifesto, what it’s future is, and whether there’s a process for participation in moving it forward. For these reasons, we’re holding off on endorsing the manifesto at this time.

3tera is fully committed to open cloud computing not just in principle, but in deeds. When there’s a truly open effort to define interoperability, application and data portability, and cross-cloud integration we’ll be a full participant.