Service level agreement

This is a translation of the French original, which governs in case of divergence.

This service level agreement supplements the terms and conditions of Avanserv SRL for the hosting and managed services named in the quote. It takes effect for a service when that service's quote refers to it.

Article 1. Definitions#

A minute is "unavailable" when the service, probed as article 3 describes, does not answer or answers with an error. An "outage" is a run of at least five consecutive unavailable minutes; a shorter interruption is not counted. A service's "monthly availability" is the ratio, expressed as a percentage, between the number of minutes in the calendar month that belong to no outage and the total number of minutes in that month, less the periods excluded by article 5.

"Working hours" are working days in Belgium, from 9:00 to 17:00, Belgian time.

Article 2. Commitment#

The provider commits to a monthly availability of 99.5% for each covered service. Over a 30-day month, that is a ceiling of 3 hours and 36 minutes of non-excluded outage.

Article 3. Measurement#

Availability is measured by the provider's external probes, polling the service at intervals of no more than one minute, from at least two distinct measurement points. A minute is counted unavailable when the majority of measurement points see it fail. The provider's measurements are authoritative, absent evidence to the contrary; they are sent to the client on request, and any divergence the client documents is examined in good faith.

The commitment of article 2 and the credits of article 6 apply from the date the provider's external probes enter service, of which the provider gives the client written notice; before that date, availability is not measured within the meaning of this agreement.

Article 4. Maintenance#

Planned maintenance happens outside the working hours defined in article 1 and is announced at least five working days ahead, with its window and its expected impact. Emergency maintenance on security grounds may be carried out without that notice; the client is told as soon as possible. Maintenance time announced this way does not enter the availability calculation, up to eight hours a month.

Article 5. Exclusions#

Interruptions caused by the following do not count as outage: maintenance under article 4; the client's or its users' applications, content, configuration or actions; services or networks outside the ordered perimeter (the client's domain name providers and the client's internet access among them); force majeure within the meaning of article 15 of the terms and conditions; and a legitimate suspension under the acceptable use policy or for non-payment.

Article 6. Service credits#

Where a covered service's monthly availability falls below the commitment, the client is entitled, on request, to a credit calculated on that service's monthly fee:

One row applies per month and per service, the one matching the availability observed; credits do not stack.

A credit is claimed in writing within 30 calendar days of the end of the month concerned, with the observations supporting it. The credit is applied to a future invoice and is not refundable in cash. For a failure to meet the service level under this agreement, credits are the client's lump-sum compensation; they do not deprive it of the other rights the terms and conditions give it, in particular the termination right of their article 8 and the provider's liability under the conditions of their article 14.

Article 7. Backup and recovery point objective#

The database of the app.avanserv.com application is backed up daily, kept for seven days. For the client's hosted data, backup follows the terms set in the quote and the data processing agreement; absent a mention in the quote, no backup is owed. Where the quote provides a daily backup, the resulting recovery point objective is 24 hours at most: on a restore, data loss cannot exceed the changes made since the last backup. This agreement carries no commitment on a recovery time.

Article 8. Incident communication#

Where a covered service is unavailable, the provider tells the client by email, at the designated contact, as soon as reasonably possible after becoming aware of it, with the information available on the incident's nature and impact, and again once the incident is resolved.

Article 9. Support#

Support is reachable at support@avanserv.com during the working hours that article 1 defines. Requests are handled by priority: an incident blocking production (priority 1) gets a first response within four working hours; an incident degrading the service without blocking it (priority 2), within the working day; a request or a minor defect (priority 3), within two working days. Those times cover taking the request on; resolution times depend on the nature of the incident and are given when the request is taken on.

Once the probes are in service, availability is measured continuously, but the response times above run only during working hours: an interruption starting on a Friday evening can therefore consume the monthly budget before the first response. On-call cover outside working hours can be agreed in the quote, with its own response times.

Article 10. Revision#

The provider may amend this agreement under the conditions set out in article 20 of the terms and conditions; the numbers committed to for a service in progress can only be reduced with the client's agreement.