Severity levels
The following levels are used to indictae the severity of a service incident
SEV 1 Anything that comprises a FAILURE as defined in the contract with EPSRC.
SEV 2 NON-FATAL incidents that typically cause immediate termination of a user application, but not the entire user service.
The service may be so degraded (or liable to collapse completely) that a controlled, but unplanned (and often very short-notice) shutdown is required or unplanned downtime subsequent to the next planned reload is necessary.
This category includes unrecovered disc errors where damage to filesystems may occur if the service was allowed to continue in operation; incidents when although the service can continue in operation in a degraded state until the next reload, downtime at less than 24 hours notice is required to fix or investigate the problem; and incidents whereby the throughput of user work is affected (typically by the unrecovered disabling of a portion of the system) even though no subsequent unplanned downtime results.
SEV 3 NON-FATAL incidents that typically cause immediate termination of a user application, but the service is able to continue in operation until the next planned reload or re-configuration.
SEV 4 NON-FATAL recoverable incidents that typically include the loss of a storage device, or a peripheral component, but the service is able to continue in operation largely unaffected, and typically the component may be replaced without any future loss of service.
