Comparison of NREN Service Level Agreements

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Comparison of NREN Service Level Agreements

• Life Cycle and Portfolio Management Workshop
• Terena, 23/11/05

Ann Harding HEAnet Network Operations Manager
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Topics

• Why
• Scope
• Deliverables
• Actions
• Resources
• Case study - HEAnet

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Why

• Internal factors
• Technical management e.g. upgrades
• Technical considerations
• External factors
• European and international projects
• Operating environment
• Client demand
• Better controlled introduction than hasty
  imposition

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Scope

• Comparison of NREN Service Level Agreements
• Narrow?
• Achieveable?
• Useful?
• Internal or external?
• Need to include analysis and recommendations or
  processes?

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Deliverables

• Taxonomy of service types?
• List of NRENs with SLAs for each service type?
• Framework for investigating need for SLA
  provision?
• Framework for defining agreed service levels?
• Identify shared services which may need a shared
  SLA?

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Actions

• Today
• Finalise scope, deliverables
• Identify interested parties
• Before end 2005
• Identify individual actions for each deliverable
• Start today?
• Assign deliverable priorities
• Assign work!!!

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Resources

• WI 1 Comparison of NREN service portfolios
• Access to appropriate contacts in NRENs
• Access to appropriate contacts in
  Terena/GN2/Other
• ...
• Our time

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Case StudyHEAnet Strategic Objective
CS1Monitoring Service Levels to Ensure
Excellence.
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Actions

1. Identify an appropriate set of operational
   benchmarks and service metrics to measure our
   performance for clients.
2. Benchmark against other NRENs.
3. Benchmark against competitors.
4. Benchmark operational performance on an ongoing
   basis.

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Deliverables

1. Definitions of types of measurements and
   performance thresholds.
2. List of client requirements.
3. Comparison of proposed benchmarks and metrics.
4. Recommendations for tools.
5. Methods for communicating data to clients.
6. Actions in the event of failure to meet
   thresholds.

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Resources

• HEAnet teams, Schools NOC.
• Client Contacts.
• NRENs Terena.
• HEAnet CTO Admin team.
• Data from Contracts CfTs.
• Data and analysis from existing monitoring tools.

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Work in Progress

• Example list of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
  assembled.
• Analysis of JANET SLA document
• New monitoring tools under trial.
• Initial rough availability stats compiled for Q1
  2005.
• First run of draft client questions compiled.
• Other resources such as Sonas report and OS1 work
  identified.

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Initial KPIs

• Client Accessibility, both v4 and v6.
• Outbound access to Géant2 General Internet.
• Service availability
• Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF).
• RTTs to Clients and other sites.
• Throughput on connections.
• NOC response times
• Per service type
• Per request type

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Initial Questions

• Questions for clients broken into hard
  soft.
• Start with softer questions to gauge expectations
  before asking harder, direct and enumerable
  questions.
• E.g. Soft Are you happy with your current
  levels of service with HEAnet?
• Hard In scenario X, what availability would
  you expect from HEAnet?

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New Tools

• Cricket Potential MRTG replacement.
• Easier to configure.
• More detailed information output.
• Greater capabilities.
• Nagios Potential Netsaint replacement.
• Greater feature list.
• More detailed reporting.
• Greater compatibility with latest webservers.

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Still to do

• Expand comparison with other NRENs
• Refine taxonomy for service types
• Allow for future flexibility within limits
• Link specific benchmarks and metrics to service
  types
• Define operational policies