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doc/10-Sla-Reporting.md

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+# SLA Reporting
+
+A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is a legally binding contract between a service provider and a customer.
+Its purpose is to define the level of service that the supplier promises to deliver to the customer.
+
+Icinga DB is designed to automatically identify and record the most relevant checkable events exclusively in a separate
+table. By default, these events are retained forever unless you have set the retention
+[`sla-days` option](03-Configuration.md#retention). It is important to note that Icinga DB records the raw events in
+the database without any interpretation. In order to generate and visualise SLA reports of specific hosts and services
+based on the accumulated events over time, [Icinga Reporting](https://icinga.com/docs/icinga-reporting/latest/doc/02-Installation/)
+is the optimal complement, facilitating comprehensive SLA report generation within a specific timeframe.
+
+## Technical Description
+
+!!! info
+
+    This documentation provides a detailed technical explanation of how Icinga DB fulfils all the
+    necessary requirements for the generation of an accurate service level agreement (SLA).
+
+Icinga DB provides a built-in support for automatically storing the relevant events of your hosts and services without
+a manual action. Generally, these events are every **hard** state change a particular checkable encounters and all the
+downtimes scheduled for that checkable throughout its entire lifetime. It is important to note that the aforementioned
+events are not analogous to those utilised by [Icinga DB Web](https://icinga.com/docs/icinga-db-web/latest/) for
+visualising host and service states.
+
+!!! info
+
+    [Acknowledgements](https://icinga.com/docs/icinga-2/latest/doc/08-advanced-topics/#acknowledgements) are special
+    events that mainly control the Icinga 2 notification logic behaviour, and acknowledging a host problem will not
+    have an impact on the SLA result for that host.
+
+In case of a hard state change of a monitored host or service, Icinga DB records the precise temporal occurrence of
+that state change in milliseconds within the `sla_history_state` table. The following image serves as a visual
+illustration of the relational and representational aspects of state change events.
+
+![SLA history state](images/sla_history_state.png)
+
+In contrast, two timestamps are retained for downtimes, one indicating the commencement of the downtime as
+`downtime_start` and the other denoting its end time, designated as `downtime_end` within the `sla_history_downtime`
+table. For the sake of completeness, the following image provides also a visual representation of the
+`sla_history_downtime` table and its relations.
+
+![SLA history downtime](images/sla_history_downtime.png)
+
+In certain circumstances, namely when a checkable is created and subsequently never deleted, this approach has been
+empirically [demonstrated](#computing-sla-ok-percent) to be sufficient. Nevertheless, in the case of a host being
+deleted and then recreated a couple of days later, the generation of SLA reports in
+[Icinga Reporting](https://icinga.com/docs/icinga-reporting/latest/doc/02-Installation/) for that host at
+the end of the week may yield disparate results, depending on the host state prior to its deletion.
+
+In order to generate SLA reports with the greatest possible accuracy, we have decided to supplement the existing data
+with information regarding the **creation** and **deletion** of hosts and services in a new `sla_lifecycle` table,
+introduced in Icinga DB **1.3.0**. This new table has a composite primary key consisting of two columns: `id` and
+`delete_time`. In this way, the `delete_time` is used to indicate whether a specific checkable has been deleted,
+with a `0` value denoting non-deleted object. In a perfect world, we would use `NULL` instead of `0` but due to the
+[primary key `constraints`](https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/8.4/en/create-table.html#create-table-indexes-keys),
+this is not possible. The `id` column represents either the service or host ID for which that particular sla lifecycle
+is being generated.
+
+![SLA lifecycle](images/sla_lifecycle.png)
+
+The upgrade script for `1.3.0` generates a `create_time` SLA lifecycle entry for all existing hosts and services.
+However, since that script has no knowledge of the creation time of these existing objects, the timestamp for them is
+produced in the following manner: As previously outlined, Icinga DB has the capability to store timestamps for both
+hard state changes and downtimes since its first stable release. This enables the upgrade script to identify the least
+event timestamp of a given checkable from the `sla_history_state` and `sla_history_downtime` tables. In cases where no
+timestamps can be obtained from the aforementioned tables, it simply fallbacks to `now`, i.e. in such situations,
+the creation time of the checkable in question is set to the current timestamp.
+
+### Events Processing
+
+It is noteworthy that Icinga DB does not record checkable **soft** state changes, in the regular `service_state`
+and `host_state` tables. However, for the `state_history`, for instance, all state changes are retrieved from Redis®
+and persisted to the database, irrespective of whether it is in High Availability (HA) or single-instance mode.
+Each time Icinga DB processes a state change, it checks whether it is a hard state change and generates the
+corresponding SLA state event in the `sla_history_state` table. Similarly, Icinga DB generates a corresponding SLA
+history downtime (`sla_history_downtime`) each time it receives a downtime-triggered or ended/cancelled event from
+Icinga 2. Notably, if Icinga DB is operating in HA mode, this process takes place in parallel, i.e. both instances
+concurrently write their respective histories to the database, consequently, the aforementioned tables have also to
+track the endpoint ids in their `endpoint_id` column.
+
+Though, it is not necessary to be concerned about the potential duplicate entries in the database, as long as the events
+from both Icinga DB instances have the same timestamp, there will be no duplicates. For instance, downtimes have unique
+and deterministic IDs, allowing the second instance to detect if that very same downtime has already been recorded by
+the other instance.
+
+The checkable events of the types **created** and **deleted**, on the other hand, are special and represent the life
+cycle of the chekables. These two events are always written by a single Icinga DB instance at a time (if in HA mode) to
+the `sla_lifecycle` table, denoting the creation and deletion of a checkable in Icinga 2. Unfortunately, Icinga 2 lacks
+the capability to accurately determine the deletion time of an object. It should also be noted that Icinga DB is also
+incapable of identifying the precise timestamp of an object's deletion. Instead, it simply records the time at which
+the deletion event for that particular checkable occurred and populates the `sla_lifecycle` table accordingly.
+Consequently, if a checkable is deleted while Icinga DB is stopped or not in an operational state, the events that
+Icinga DB would otherwise record once it is restarted will not reflect the actual deletion or creation time.
+
+#### Initial Config Sync
+
+Each time when either the Icinga DB or Icinga 2 service is reloaded, Icinga DB computes something called a config
+`delta`. The config delta determines which objects need to be deleted from the database, to be updated, or are new and
+need to be inserted. After successfully computing and dumping the config, Icinga DB then performs a simple SQL
+`INSERT INTO sla_lifecycle` statements for all checkables that don't already have **created** SLA event with
+`delete_time` set to `0` and sets their `create_time` to `now`. Additionally, it also updates the `delete_time` column
+of each existing SLA lifecycle entries whose checkable IDs cannot be found in the `host/service` tables.
+
+#### Runtime Updates
+
+When a host or service is created or deleted at runtime, either using
+[Icinga Director](https://icinga.com/docs/icinga-director/latest/doc/01-Introduction/) or the plain `/v1/objects` API
+endpoint, Icinga DB automatically generates an SLA lifecycle entry denoting the checkable creation or deletion time.
+For all runtime *created* checkables, the SLA lifecycle entries are inserted using a slightly sophisticated SQL `INSERT`
+statement with ignore on error mechanism, i.e. if it encounters a `duplicate key` error, it simply suppresses the error
+and discards the query. In contrast, for runtime *deleted* checkables, it assumes that there is an SLA lifecycle
+**created** event for these checkables, and uses a simple `UPDATE` statement setting their deletion time to now.
+Consequently, should there be no corresponding **created** event for these checkables, the update statement becomes a
+no-op, as the [initial config dump](#initial-config-sync) should have created the necessary entries for all existing
+objects.
+
+### Computing SLA OK percent
+
+The following is a simplified explanation of the current (Icinga DB `1.3.0`) methodology behind the `get_sla_ok_percent`
+SQL procedure, used to calculate the SLA OK percent. It is a fundamental characteristic of functional specifications
+for Icinga Reporting to only generate reports covering a specific timeframe. Accordingly, the `get_sla_ok_percent`
+SQL procedure necessitates the input of the start and end timeframes within which the SLA is to be calculated.
+
+First, it is necessary to identify the latest [`hard_state`](#hard-state-vs-previous-hard-state) of the service or host
+that occurred at or prior to the timeline start date, and marking it as the initial one. In case the first query fails
+to determine a `hard_state` entry, it proceeds to search for a [`previous_hard_state`](#hard-state-vs-previous-hard-state)
+entry in the `sla_history_state` table that have been recorded after the start of the timeline. If this approach also
+fails to retrieve the desired outcome, the regular non-historical `host_state` or `service_state` table is then
+examined for the current state. Should this also produce no results, then it uses `OK` as its initial state.
+
+Next, we need to get the total time of the specified timeframe, expressed in milliseconds, for which we're going to
+compute the SLA OK percent (`total_time = timeline_end - timeline_start`).
+
+Afterward, it traverses the entire state and downtime events within the provided timeframe, performing a series of
+simple arithmetic operations. The complete algorithmic process is illustrated in the following pseudocode.
+
+```
+total_time := timeline_end - timeline_start
+
+// Mark the timeline start date as our last event time for now.
+last_event_time := timeline_start
+
+// The problem time of a given host or service is initially set to zero.
+problem_time := 0
+
+// The previous_hard_state is determined dynamically as described above, however,
+// for the purposes of this analysis, we'll just set it to 'OK'.
+previous_hard_state := OK
+
+// Loop through all the state and downtime events within the provided timeframe ordered by their timestamp.
+for event in (sla_history_state, sla_history_downtime) do
+    if (event.previous_hard_state is PENDING) then
+        // A PENDING state event indicates that the host or service in question has not yet had a check result that
+        // clearly identifies its state. Consequently, such events become irrelevant for the purposes of calculating
+        // the SLA and we must exclude the duration of that PENDING state from the total time.
+        total_time = total_time - (event.event_time - last_event_time)
+    else if (previous_hard_state is greater than OK/UP
+        AND previous_hard_state is not PENDING
+        AND checkable is not in DOWNTIME) then
+        // If the previous_hard_state is set to a non-OK state and the host or service in question was not in downtime,
+        // we consider that time slot to be problematic and add the duration to the problem time.
+        problem_time = problem_time + (event.event_time - last_event_time)
+    endif
+
+    // Set the "last_event_time" to the timestamp of the event being currently processed.
+    last_event_time = event.event_time
+    
+    if (event.type is "state change event") then
+        // If the event being currently processed is a state change event, we mark its
+        // latest hard state as the previous one for the next iteration.
+        previous_hard_state = event.hard_state
+    endif
+endloop
+```
+
+At this point, we now have computed the problem time of a particular host or service for a given time frame. The final
+step is to determine the percentage of the remaining total time. In other words, we want to find out how much of the
+total time is taken up by the problem time, so that we can obtain our final SLA OK percentage result.
+
+```
+sla_ok_percent := 100 * (total_time - problem_time) / total_time
+```
+
+The following example illustrates the practical implications of this concept. Suppose we have the following SLA events:
+```json
+{
+    "state": [
+        {"event_time": 1200, "hard_state": 2, "previous_hard_state": 0},
+        {"event_time": 1500, "hard_state": 0, "previous_hard_state": 2}
+    ],
+    "downtime": [
+        {"downtime_start": 1100, "downtime_end": 1300},
+        {"downtime_start": 1400, "downtime_end": 1600}
+    ]
+}
+```
+
+We would now like to calculate the SLA OK percent for the timeframe from `1000` to `2000`.
+
+```
+total_time := 2000 - 1000
+problem_time := 0
+
+- 1000..1200 // in OK state (see the previous_hard_state of the first state event), so nothing to do.
+- 1200..1300 // in Critical state, but was also set in downtime from (1100..1300), so here also nothing to do.
+- 1300..1400 // still in Critical state and is not in downtime, so we count that time slot as a problem time.
+problem_time = problem_time + 1400 - 1300
+
+- 1400..1500 // still in critical state, but we have an active downtime during this period again, so nothing to do.
+- 1500..2000 // in OK state
+
+// So, this indicates that our host was either not in a problem state or was set
+// to a downtime for 90% of the period from 1000 to 2000.
+sla_ok_percent := 100 * (total_time - problem_time) / total_time
+```
+
+## Appendix
+
+### Hard State vs. Previous Hard State
+
+The `hard_state` column denotes the most recent hard state of the host and service.
+Conversely, the `previous_hard_state` column indicates the preceding hard state that was formerly stored in the
+`hard_state` column prior to the host or service transitioning to a new hard state. Please refer to the tabular
+representation below for a visual representation of this information.
+
+| previous_hard_state           | hard_state |
+|-------------------------------|------------|
+| PENDING (no check result yet) | OK         |
+| OK                            | Warning    |
+| Warning                       | Critical   |
+| Critical                      | OK         |