Service Level Agreement for VMware vCloud Air

Last updated: August 31, 2015

This Service Level Agreement (“SLA”) is subject to the terms of the applicable Terms of Service for the VMware vCloud Air Service Offerings listed below. Capitalized terms not defined in this SLA will have the meanings specified in the Terms of Service. We reserve the right to change the terms of this SLA in accordance with the Terms of Service for the Service Offering. Prior versions of this SLA are available at https://www.vmware.com/support/vcloud-air/sla_history.html.

VMware will use commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that each class of service purchased for an identified user of an instance of a Service Offering (“you” or “Customer”) is “Available” during a given calendar month equal to the “Availability Commitment” provided in the table below.

If the Availability of a class of service that you purchase is less than the associated Availability Commitment, then you may request Service Credits for that affected class of service.  Availability in a given month is calculated according to the following formula:

“Availability” = ((total minutes in a calendar month – total minutes Unavailable) / total minutes in a calendar month) x 100

Unavailability and SLA Events

A class of service will be considered “Unavailable,” subject to the Service Level Agreement Limitations set forth below, if VMware’s monitoring tools determine one of the following events has occurred (“SLA Event”). The total minutes that a class of service is Unavailable for a particular SLA Event is measured from the time that VMware validates the SLA Event has occurred, as defined below, until the time that VMware resolves the SLA Event such that the Service Offering is Available to you. If two or more SLA Event occurs simultaneously, the SLA Event with the longest duration will be used to determine the total minutes Unavailable.

• Each of the following will be considered an SLA Event for the Dedicated Cloud, Virtual Private Cloud, or Virtual Private Cloud OnDemand Services:
  a) Any of the network interfaces of the Service Offering Network are unavailable for more than three (3) consecutive minutes. The “Service Offering Network” means the network that extends from the network interfaces of physical host servers for a class of service to the outside network interfaces providing the Service Offering's public internet connectivity.
  b) The data store(s) associated with your block level storage for a class of service are unavailable for more than three (3) consecutive minutes.
  c) The self-service console, available at https://vchs.vmware.com, cannot successfully authenticate a simulated user for more than five (5) consecutive minutes.
  d) Your running virtual machines for a class of service become inaccessible for more than five (5) consecutive minutes due to physical host server failures.
• Each of the following will be considered an SLA Event for the Data Protection Service:
  a) The backup storage repository associated with your Data Protection service is unavailable for more than three (3) consecutive minutes.
  b) The start time associated with your backup scheduling window is missed for longer than thirty (30) consecutive minutes.
  c) The standard 24-hour recovery point objective (RPO) is missed for any virtual machines actively enrolled in the service.
  d) Any restore operation for a virtual machine fails to complete due to backup infrastructure failures.
• Each of the following will be considered an SLA Event for the Disaster Recovery Service:
  a) Any of the network interfaces of the Service Offering Network are unavailable for more than three (3) consecutive minutes.
  b) The data store(s) associated with your block level storage for replication is unavailable for more than three (3) consecutive minutes.
  c) The self-service console, available at https://vchs.vmware.com, cannot successfully authenticate a simulated user for more than five (5) consecutive minutes.
  d) Your failed-over virtual machines for a class of service become inaccessible for more than five (5) consecutive minutes due to physical host server failures.
  e) Any built-in service functions for failover testing, planned migration, or live failover and recovery result in virtual machine replicas not powering on in less than 4 consecutive hours from the time a request is acknowledged and approved by VMware.
• The following will be considered an SLA Event for the Object Storage service:
  a) A more than five (5) percent Error Rate for more than ten (10) consecutive minutes – where “Error Rate” means the number of valid requests that result in a response with HTTP Status 500 and Code “Internal Error” divided by the total number of valid requests during each five-minute period.

Service Credits

• For All Classes of Service (except all Object Storage Classes of Service):
  
  “Service Credits” means an SLA Credit, a Chronic SLA Credit or a Repetitive SLA Credit.
  
  If the Availability of a class of service that you purchase is less than the associated Availability Commitment in a given calendar month, then you may request one (1) SLA Credit, and one (1) additional SLA Credit for each additional 300 minutes the class of service was Unavailable, up to a total of three (3) SLA Credits in a given calendar month. An “SLA Credit” is an amount equal to 10% of the monthly Service Offering recurring or metered (as applicable) subscription charges invoiced by VMware for the affected class of service in the calendar month for which the SLA Credit is due.
  
  If a particular class of service is Unavailable for 24 consecutive hours, then you may request a Chronic SLA Credit. A “Chronic SLA Credit” is an amount equal to 100% of the monthly Service Offering recurring or metered (as applicable) subscription charges invoiced by VMware, for the affected class of service, in the calendar month in which the SLA Credit is due. Any Chronic SLA Credit is in lieu of any SLA Credits that might be otherwise due.
  
  If you are eligible to receive an SLA Credit or a Chronic SLA Credit in three (3) consecutive calendar months and all the credits are related to the same SLA Event type, then you may request a Repetitive SLA Credit. A “Repetitive SLA Credit” is an amount equal 100% of the largest monthly Service Offering recurring or metered (as applicable) subscription charges invoiced by VMware for the affected class of service, in one of the calendar months in which the SLA Event occurred. If an SLA Credit or a Chronic SLA Credit was already received in the Repetitive SLA Credit period, then the amount of the Service Credit that you may request will be the difference between the aggregate amount of Service Credits received and the Repetitive SLA Credit.
• For Object Storage Classes of Service:
  
  For all Object Storage classes of service, “Service Credits” means a First SLA Credit or a Second SLA Credit.
  
  For Object Storage powered by Google Cloud Platform (Standard):
  • If the Availability of this class of service is less than the associated Availability Commitment, but does not exceed Unavailability of more than 438 minutes total, in a given calendar month, then you may request one (1) First SLA Credit. For this class of service, a “First SLA Credit” is an amount equal to 10% of the monthly Service Offering recurring or metered (as applicable) subscription charges invoiced by VMware in the calendar month for which the SLA Credit is due.
  • If this class of service is Unavailable for more than 438 minutes total in a given calendar month, then you may request a Second SLA Credit. For this class of service, a “Second SLA Credit” is an amount equal to 25% of the monthly Service Offering recurring or metered (as applicable) subscription charges invoiced by VMware in the calendar month for which the SLA Credit is due. Any Second SLA Credit is in lieu of any First SLA Credit that might have been otherwise due.
  
  For Object Storage powered by Google Cloud Platform (Durable Reduced Availability) and Object Storage powered by Google Cloud Platform (Nearline Storage):
  • If the Availability of one of these classes of service that you purchase is less than the associated Availability Commitment, but does not exceed Unavailability of more than 2232 minutes total, in a given calendar month, then you may request one (1) First SLA Credit. For these classes of service, a “First SLA Credit” is an amount equal to 25% of the monthly Service Offering recurring or metered (as applicable) subscription charges invoiced by VMware for the affected class of service in the calendar month for which the SLA Credit is due.
  • If one of these classes of service that you purchase is Unavailable for more than 2232 minutes total in a given calendar month, then you may request a Second SLA Credit. For these classes of service, a “Second SLA Credit” is an amount equal to 50% of the monthly Service Offering recurring or metered (as applicable) subscription charges invoiced by VMware for the affected class of service in the calendar month for which the SLA Credit is due. Any Second SLA Credit is in lieu of any First SLA Credit that might have been otherwise due.

Service Level Agreement Limitations

The following will be excluded from any time-based calculations related to a class of service being Unavailable: (i) scheduled maintenance windows where you have been notified at least 24 hours in advance, (ii) recurring or zero impact maintenance windows that are made generally available to all customers, (iii) your misuse of a particular class of service, (iv) force majeure events, denial of service attacks, virus or hacking attacks for which there is no commercially reasonable, known solution, or any other events that are not within our direct control or that could not have been avoided with commercially reasonable care, (v) packet loss, network or internet problems beyond VMware’s border router supporting our public internet connectivity, or (vi) bugs in code, hardware, or services for which there is no commercially reasonable, known fix (even if there is a known workaround).

You will not be eligible to receive a Service Credit if: (i) your service account has any payments for the Service Offering delinquent, (ii) you are in violation of Section 3 of the Terms of Service during the time of the SLA Event, or (iii) the SLA Event was due to your failure to meet your security responsibilities as set forth in the Terms of Service.

VMware’s monitoring tools, data and records will be the sole source of information used to track and validate Availability. Upon request, VMware will provide to you, within 45 days after a confirmed SLA Event (but no more than once per calendar year), a copy of the Availability report that VMware makes generally available to customers.

Service Level Agreement Claims

In order to request any Service Credit, you must file a support request at https://my.vmware.com within sixty (60) days of the suspected SLA Event. VMware will review the request and issue a Service Credit when VMware validates the SLA Event based on VMware’s data and records.

Service Credits will be issued to the person or entity that VMware invoices for the applicable instance of the Service Offering, as a separate credit memo that can be applied towards a future invoice for that Service Offering instance. If your subscription term for the Service Offering expires or is terminated prior to the issuance of a Service Credit, the Service Credit will become void as of the date of the expiration or termination.

The Service Credits specified in this SLA are your sole and exclusive remedies for any SLA Events occurring during your subscription term for the Service Offering or for any other claim in connection with this SLA.