# SUS02-BP02 Align SLAs with sustainability goals
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 Review and optimize workload service-level agreements (SLA) based on your sustainability goals to minimize the resources required to support your workload while continuing to meet business needs. 

 **Common anti-patterns:** 
+  Workload SLAs are unknown or ambiguous. 
+  You define your SLA just for availability and performance. 
+  You use the same design pattern (like Multi-AZ architecture) for all your workloads. 

 **Benefits of establishing this best practice:** Aligning SLAs with sustainability goals leads to optimal resource usage while meeting business needs. 

 **Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established:** Low 

## Implementation guidance
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 SLAs define the level of service expected from a cloud workload, such as response time, availability, and data retention. They influence the architecture, resource usage, and environmental impact of a cloud workload. At a regular cadence, review SLAs and make trade-offs that significantly reduce resource usage in exchange for acceptable decreases in service levels. 

 **Implementation steps** 
+  Define or redesign SLAs that support your sustainability goals while meeting your business requirements, not exceeding them. 
+  Make trade-offs that significantly reduce sustainability impacts in exchange for acceptable decreases in service levels. 
  +  **Sustainability and reliability:** Highly available workloads tend to consume more resources. 
  +  **Sustainability and performance:** Using more resources to boost performance could have a higher environmental impact. 
  +  **Sustainability and security:** Overly secure workloads could have a higher environmental impact. 
+  Use design patterns such as [microservices on AWS](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/microservices-on-aws/microservices-on-aws.html) that prioritize business-critical functions and allow lower service levels (such as response time or recovery time objectives) for non-critical functions. 

## Resources
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 **Related documents:** 
+  [AWS Service Level Agreements (SLAs)](https://aws.amazon.com/legal/service-level-agreements/?aws-sla-cards.sort-by=item.additionalFields.serviceNameLower&aws-sla-cards.sort-order=asc&awsf.tech-category-filter=*all) 
+  [Importance of Service Level Agreement for SaaS Providers](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/importance-of-service-level-agreement-for-saas-providers/) 

 **Related videos:** 
+ [ Delivering sustainable, high-performing architectures ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBc9hXQfat0)
+ [ Build a cost-, energy-, and resource-efficient compute environment ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zsC5e1eLCg)