Addendum A: Service Level Agreement
This SLA applies to customers with signed Sales Agreements only.
This agreement covers the following named Hosted Services:
- Microsoft BizTalk Hosting Services
- Microsoft Exchange Server Hosting Services
- Microsoft SharePoint Portal or Foundation Server Hosting Services
- Microsoft Project Server Hosting Services
- Microsoft Small Business Server Hosting Services
- Microsoft SQL Server Hosting Services
- Microsoft Terminal Services Hosting Services
- Dedicated Web Site Hosting Services
- Dedicated EPI Administered or Managed Server Rental Services
- Co-Hosted or Co-Located Equipment Services
to which you (the “Customer”) have subscribed.
After the Stabilization Period (defined below), EPI Internet Direct (“EPI”) guarantees the Hosted Services will meet or exceed the availability objectives set forth in this Service Level Agreement.
Availability
For each of the listed Hosted Services EPI provides a 99.5% monthly “Uptime Guarantee” which means that EPI will maintain a “Monthly Availability” of no less than 99.5% during each calendar month. A “Service Outage” begins if the contracted Hosted Service is unavailable or cannot be reached for a minimum period of five consecutive minutes as measured by EPI’s internal and external monitoring services and reported by you to EPI Technical Support staff.
The following downtime events shall not be considered part of a Service Outage:
1. Regularly Scheduled Maintenance. Regularly Scheduled Maintenance shall mean any operating system or computer hardware maintenance performed to the Hosted Service that is performed during one or more EPI’s regular scheduled maintenance windows. For information on EPI’s regular scheduled maintenance windows, please see: https://epidirect.com/policies/scheduled-emergency-maintenance-policies/
2. Customer Authorized Maintenance of any type. For the purposes of this Service Level Agreement, Customer Authorized Maintenance means a service request that has been requested or authorized by the Customer which involves a service outage of any type.
3. Unavailability of the Services due to Customer misuse, application programming or configuration errors, failures of programs or processes associated with client specific custom or client requested third party application programs of any type including failures which result in excessive CPU utilization, customer non-performance or non-completion of any or all customer activities reasonably required to ensure the ongoing availability of service, service suspensions due to late or missing payments, negligent or unlawful acts by Customer or its agents or its suppliers, problems with Customer’s registrar, problems with customer managed DNS or other third party zone transfer technologies, problems with connectivity to third party providers to which the customers applications or services depend, network unavailability due to a failure of upstream Internet network services located outside of EPI’s data center facilities or outside of the control of EPI including but not limited to any and all third party upstream service and communications suppliers providing services at any point between EPI’s data center demarcation point and any affected Customer location, events of force majeure.
4. Unavailability of the Services due to mechanical or electronic failure of client supplied equipment of any type.
For EPI supplied dedicated servers only:
- Unless your dedicated server solution includes high-availability load-balanced and/or clustered hardware, this SLA does not apply if your service is unavailable due to the mechanical or electronic failure of dedicated equipment.
- Regardless, this SLA does not apply to dedicated server solutions of any type unless your hardware deployment includes RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10 or a EPI provisioned SAN (Storage Area Network) or NAS (Network Attached Storage) solution.
EPI, in its sole discretion, shall determine whether an event will be considered a “Service Outage” based on its records and available data. For the purposes of this SLA a Service Outage begins a) for services monitored by EPI through either an internal or external monitoring service, immediately upon receipt of the associated SMS or pager notification. For services not monitored by EPI, immediately upon receipt of your transmitted pager, SMS, telephone or other EPI recognized notification of a service outage (which ever notification arrives first). Notifications transmitted by email only without a prior notification by pager, telephone or other contact device are not, for the purposes of this SLA, accepted as notification of an outage.
For more information on contacting EPI during a service outage, see: Contacting EPI for Emergency Technical Support
Remedies
When Customer becomes aware of a Service Outage, Customer shall open a trouble ticket with EPI Customer Support within two (2) calendar days. If EPI determines in its reasonable commercial judgment that the Service Outage lasted beyond EPI’s guaranteed Monthly Availability then EPI will credit Customer’s account a pro-rated value based on the amount of time that the Service Outage exceeded EPI’s Uptime Guarantee. To qualify for any credit Customer must have a current and valid Sales Agreement for the Services affected and must have their account in good standing. Credits are not applied to accounts with outstanding Accounts Receivables.
EPI will not provide any credits to customers that have purchased or acquired Services through a reseller, distributor, or indirectly through any other company. Credits will not apply to any EPI Professional Services, custom services, or to charges for services other than the Monthly Fee for the Services for which Monthly Availability was not met.
Credits are applied to reduce the net amount of future invoices only. Customers with subscriptions for more than one Service will not receive credits for unaffected Services. Customer’s account shall not be credited more than once per month under this Service Level Agreement. This is the sole and exclusive remedy if EPI does not meet the commitments set forth in this Service Level Agreement.
Stabilization Period Definition
The Stabilization Period is a period of thirty (30) days beginning on the date the Customer is deployed onto a Hosted Service, during which EPI and Customer work to configure several variables in order to meet full operational performance parameters. During the Stabilization Period, the service level guarantees shall not apply.
EPI Hosted Service Definition
The EPI Hosted Service is defined as the combination of servers, hardware and associated software that are responsible for delivering a Service.
Notes Regarding Co-Hosted (Co-Located) Equipment:
EPI does not manage or otherwise administer co-hosted equipment and does not provide SLA reimbursements for faults caused by the failure of co-hosted equipment whether due to equipment or hardware failure, configuration errors, virus infections or other issues outside of the control of EPI. Clients with co-hosted equipment are exclusively responsible for ensuring the proper configuration and maintenance of their equipment and related software.
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EPI reserves the right to modify this Service Level Agreement from time to time.