Google Kubernetes Engine Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Last modified: June 04, 2020

During the Term of the agreement under which Google has agreed to provide Google Cloud Platform to Customer (as applicable, the "Agreement"), the Covered Service will provide a Monthly Uptime Percentage to Customer as follows (the "Service Level Objective" or "SLO"):

Covered Service Monthly Uptime Percentage
Zonal Clusters 99.5%
Regional Clusters 99.95%

If Google does not meet the SLO, and if Customer meets its obligations under this SLA, Customer will be eligible to receive the Financial Credits described below. This SLA states Customer's sole and exclusive remedy for any failure by Google to meet the SLO. Capitalized terms used in this SLA, but not defined in this SLA, have the meaning set forth in the Agreement. If the Agreement authorizes the resale or supply of Google Cloud Platform under a Google Cloud partner or reseller program, then all references to Customer in this SLA mean Partner or Reseller (as applicable), and any Financial Credit(s) will only apply for impacted Partner or Reseller order(s) under the Agreement.

Definitions

The following definitions apply to the SLA:

  • “Covered Service” means, for each of Zonal Clusters and Regional Clusters, the Kubernetes API provided by Customer's cluster(s), so long as the version of Google Kubernetes Engine deployed in the cluster is a version currently offered in the Stable Channel.

  • “Downtime” means loss of external connectivity or Kubernetes API access to all running clusters with the inability to launch replacement clusters in any Zone. Downtime does not include:

    • Scheduled Downtime;

    • Loss of connectivity or other issues related to the underlying Compute Engine instances, such as Load Balancing and VPN tunneling, which are covered under the respective Compute Engine and Cloud VPN SLAs; or

    • Failure of Kubernetes nodes or the Kubernetes pods running on those nodes.

  • “Downtime Period” means a period of five consecutive minutes of Downtime. Intermittent Downtime for a period of less than five minutes will not be counted towards any Downtime Periods.

  • “Financial Credit” means the following:

    Monthly Uptime Percentage
    Regional Cluster Zonal Cluster
    		Percentage of monthly bill for the respective Covered Service that does not meet SLO and that will be credited to Customer's future monthly bills
    99.0% to < 99.95% 99.0% to < 99.50%
    		10%
    95.0% to < 99.0% 95.0% to < 99.0%
    		25%
    < 95.0% < 95.0%
    		50%

  • “Monthly Uptime Percentage” means total number of minutes in a month, minus the number of Downtime minutes suffered from all Downtime Periods in a month, divided by the total number of minutes in a month.

  • “Maintenance Window” means a period of time when clusters are taken offline for maintenance tasks. This includes upgrading the Kubernetes APIs.

  • “Regional Cluster” means a cluster topology that consists of three replicas of the control plane, running in multiple Zones within a given Region, as described at https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/concepts/types-of-clusters#regional_clusters.

  • “Zonal Cluster” means a single-Zone cluster with a single control plane (master) running in one Zone as described at https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/concepts/types-of-clusters#single-zone_clusters.

  • “Scheduled Downtime” means Downtime resulting from Google performing maintenance on the Covered Service during a Maintenance Window.

  • “Stable Channel” means the Stable release channel described at https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/concepts/release-channels.

  • “Zone” means the applicable zone described at https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/regions-zones/, as may be updated by Google from time to time.

Customer Must Request Financial Credit

In order to receive any of the Financial Credits described above, Customer must notify Google technical support within 30 days from the time Customer becomes eligible to receive a Financial Credit. Customer must also provide Google with server log files showing loss of external connectivity errors and the date and time those errors occurred. If Customer does not comply with these requirements, Customer will forfeit its right to receive a Financial Credit. If a dispute arises with respect to this SLA, Google will make a determination in good faith based on its system logs, monitoring reports, configuration records, and other available information.

Maximum Financial Credit

The maximum aggregate number of Financial Credits issued by Google to Customer for all Downtime Periods in a single billing month will not exceed 50% of the amount due from Customer for the Covered Service for the applicable month. Financial Credits will be in the form of a monetary credit applied to future use of the Service and will be applied within 60 days after the Financial Credit was requested. Customer may not collect Financial Credits for the same episode of Downtime under both this SLA and another Google Cloud SLA.

SLA Exclusions

The SLA does not apply to any (a) features designated pre-general availability (unless otherwise set forth in the associated Documentation); (b) features excluded from the SLA (in the associated Documentation); (c) Customer clusters where the deployed version of Google Kubernetes Engine is not offered through the Stable Channel; or (d) errors: (i) caused by factors outside of Google's reasonable control; (ii) that resulted from Customer's software or hardware or third party software or hardware, or both; (iii) that resulted from abuses or other behaviors that violate the Agreement; or (iv) that resulted from quotas applied by the system and/or listed in the Admin Console.