[jordigh]

What vendor support do you get exactly from Microsoft? Their EULA typically has a SHOUTY CAPS NO WARRANTY CLAUSE, so what does the SLA cover? Have you successfully resorted to the SLA to handle problems you've had?

I'm honestly curious. I just don't know how SLAs work, and whom can you blame if you have problems with MS SQL.

[Spearchucker]

Vendor support from Microsoft is about requesting help with issues. You get x number of support calls, depending on what you paid. Microsoft has fixed service levels for that, and you've little option other than paying more money if you want a quicker turn-around.

SQL Server itself doesn't ship with an SLA.

You'd get that from your service provider or systems integrator, because the customer chooses her own service levels (determined by business continuity objectives). Her SP or SI (or in-house IT department) would then deploy SQL Server in a way intended to meet the required service level. Specifically, the customer might opt for five nines (99.999%) availability. Such a deployment doesn't look anything like one that must only be available from 8am to 5pm on weekdays - even though both SLAs are met using the same SQL Server code base from Microsoft (but on vastly different hardware and network configurations).

The availability associated with an SLA usually goes hand-in-hand with disaster recovery (recovery time objective, and recovery point objective[1]), but can also apply to support turn-around (a support request is triaged, and based on severity is resolved within the amount of time specified for that severity by the SLA). As mentioned, if I'm not mistaken Microsoft has fixed service levels for that. IIRC an MSDN subscription gets you a small number of free requests. An Enterprise Agreement gets you a whole bunch more.

There are many other quality objectives you can specify with an SLA, including efficiency (capacity), integrity (security), and robustness (stability) [2].

So unless you're hosted by Azure or have an Enterprise Agreement, Microsoft is rather unlikely to provide you with an SLA. And even then you'd be the one telling them what your service level requirement is. If Microsoft can't deliver on your service level requirements, you'd do it yourself, or get a systems integrator to do it for you.

[1] http://www.druva.com/blog/understanding-rpo-and-rto/

[2] https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=d8c54975-bd0a-410...

[WoodenChair]

> What vendor support do you get exactly from Microsoft? Their EULA typically has a SHOUTY CAPS NO WARRANTY CLAUSE, so what does the SLA cover?

Bringing up the "no warranty" clause is a total straw man argument. Almost every software license (whether proprietary or open source) has a no warranty clause.