slo implementation

---
name: slo-implementation
description: "Framework for defining and implementing Service Level Indicators (SLIs), Service Level Objectives (SLOs), and error budgets."
risk: critical
source: community
date_added: "2026-02-27"
---

# SLO Implementation

Framework for defining and implementing Service Level Indicators (SLIs), Service Level Objectives (SLOs), and error budgets.

## Do not use this skill when

- The task is unrelated to slo implementation
- You need a different domain or tool outside this scope

## Instructions

- Clarify goals, constraints, and required inputs.
- Apply relevant best practices and validate outcomes.
- Provide actionable steps and verification.
- If detailed examples are required, open `resources/implementation-playbook.md`.

## Purpose

Implement measurable reliability targets using SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets to balance reliability with innovation velocity.

## Use this skill when

- Define service reliability targets
- Measure user-perceived reliability
- Implement error budgets
- Create SLO-based alerts
- Track reliability goals

## SLI/SLO/SLA Hierarchy

```
SLA (Service Level Agreement)
  ↓ Contract with customers
SLO (Service Level Objective)
  ↓ Internal reliability target
SLI (Service Level Indicator)
  ↓ Actual measurement
```

## Defining SLIs

### Common SLI Types

#### 1. Availability SLI
```promql
# Successful requests / Total requests
sum(rate(http_requests_total{status!~"5.."}[28d]))
/
sum(rate(http_requests_total[28d]))
```

#### 2. Latency SLI
```promql
# Requests below latency threshold / Total requests
sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket{le="0.5"}[28d]))
/
sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_count[28d]))
```

#### 3. Write Success SLI
```
# Successful writes / Total writes
sum(storage_writes_successful_total)
/
sum(storage_writes_total)
```

**Reference:** See `references/slo-definitions.md`

## Setting SLO Targets

### Availability SLO Examples

The downtime equivalents below assume a time-based SLI, a 30-day month and a 365-day year; do not convert request-based budgets to downtime without a traffic model.

| SLO % | Downtime/Month | Downtime/Year |
|-------|----------------|---------------|
| 99%   | 7.2 hours      | 3.65 days     |
| 99.9% | 43.2 minutes   | 8.76 hours    |
| 99.95%| 21.6 minutes   | 4.38 hours    |
| 99.99%| 4.32 minutes   | 52.56 minutes |

### Choose Appropriate SLOs

**Consider:**
- User expectations
- Business requirements
- Current performance
- Cost of reliability
- Competitor benchmarks

**Example SLOs:**
```yaml
slos:
  - name: api_availability
    target: 99.9
    window: 28d
    sli: |
      sum(rate(http_requests_total{status!~"5.."}[28d]))
      /
      sum(rate(http_requests_total[28d]))

  - name: api_latency_under_500ms
    target: 99
    window: 28d
    sli: |
      sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket{le="0.5"}[28d]))
      /
      sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_count[28d]))
```

## Error Budget Calculation

### Error Budget Formula

```
Error Budget = 1 - SLO Target
```

**Example:**
- SLO: 99.9% availability
- Error Budget: 0.1% = 43.2 minutes/month
- Current Error: 0.05% = 21.6 minutes/month
- Remaining Budget: 50%

### Error Budget Policy

```yaml
error_budget_policy:
  - remaining_budget: 100%
    action: Normal development velocity
  - remaining_budget: 50%
    action: Consider postponing risky changes
  - remaining_budget: 10%
    action: Freeze non-critical changes
  - remaining_budget: 0%
    action: Feature freeze, focus on reliability
```

**Reference:** See `references/error-budget.md`

## SLO Implementation

### Prometheus Recording Rules

```yaml
# SLI Recording Rules
groups:
  - name: sli_rules
    interval: 30s
    rules:
      # Availability SLI
      - record: sli:http_availability:ratio
        expr: |
          sum(rate(http_requests_total{status!~"5.."}[28d]))
          /
          sum(rate(http_requests_total[28d]))

      # Latency SLI (requests < 500ms)
      - record: sli:http_latency:ratio
        expr: |
          sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket{le="0.5"}[28d]))
          /
          sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_count[28d]))

  - name: slo_rules
    interval: 5m
    rules:
      # SLO compliance (1 = meeting SLO, 0 = violating)
      - record: slo:http_availability:compliance
        expr: sli:http_availability:ratio >= bool 0.999

      - record: slo:http_latency:compliance
        expr: sli:http_latency:ratio >= bool 0.99

      # Error budget remaining (percentage)
      - record: slo:http_availability:error_budget_remaining
        expr: |
          (sli:http_availability:ratio - 0.999) / (1 - 0.999) * 100

      # Error budget burn rate
      - record: slo:http_availability:burn_rate_5m
        expr: |
          (1 - (
            sum(rate(http_requests_total{status!~"5.."}[5m]))
            /
            sum(rate(http_requests_total[5m]))
          )) / (1 - 0.999)
```

The exhaustion projection below assumes a constant recent burn rate. Zero burn has no finite exhaustion time; an exhausted budget must display as already exhausted. Missing telemetry is not healthy traffic.

### Additional Burn-Rate Recording Rules

Include these rules in the same recording-rule group before using the alert examples:

```yaml
- record: slo:http_availability:burn_rate_1h
  expr: (sum(rate(http_requests_total{status=~"5.."}[1h])) / sum(rate(http_requests_total[1h]))) / (1 - 0.999)
- record: slo:http_availability:burn_rate_6h
  expr: (sum(rate(http_requests_total{status=~"5.."}[6h])) / sum(rate(http_requests_total[6h]))) / (1 - 0.999)
- record: slo:http_availability:burn_rate_30m
  expr: (sum(rate(http_requests_total{status=~"5.."}[30m])) / sum(rate(http_requests_total[30m]))) / (1 - 0.999)
```

### SLO Alerting Rules

```yaml
groups:
  - name: slo_alerts
    interval: 1m
    rules:
      # Fast burn: 14.4x rate, 1 hour window
      # Approximately 2.14% of a 28-day budget in 1 hour at constant traffic
      - alert: SLOErrorBudgetBurnFast
        expr: |
          slo:http_availability:burn_rate_1h > 14.4
          and
          slo:http_availability:burn_rate_5m > 14.4
        for: 2m
        labels:
          severity: critical
        annotations:
          summary: "Fast error budget burn detected"
          description: "Error budget burning at {{ $value }}x rate"

      # Slow burn: 6x rate, 6 hour window
      # Approximately 5.36% of a 28-day budget in 6 hours at constant traffic
      - alert: SLOErrorBudgetBurnSlow
        expr: |
          slo:http_availability:burn_rate_6h > 6
          and
          slo:http_availability:burn_rate_30m > 6
        for: 15m
        labels:
          severity: warning
        annotations:
          summary: "Slow error budget burn detected"
          description: "Error budget burning at {{ $value }}x rate"

      # Error budget exhausted
      - alert: SLOErrorBudgetExhausted
        expr: slo:http_availability:error_budget_remaining < 0
        for: 5m
        labels:
          severity: critical
        annotations:
          summary: "SLO error budget exhausted"
          description: "Error budget remaining: {{ $value }}%"
```

## SLO Dashboard

**Grafana Dashboard Structure:**

```
┌────────────────────────────────────┐
│ SLO Compliance (Current)           │
│ ✓ 99.95% (Target: 99.9%)          │
├────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Error Budget Remaining: 65%        │
│ ████████░░ 65%                     │
├────────────────────────────────────┤
│ SLI Trend (28 days)                │
│ [Time series graph]                │
├────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Burn Rate Analysis                 │
│ [Burn rate by time window]         │
└────────────────────────────────────┘
```

**Example Queries:**

```promql
# Current SLO compliance
sli:http_availability:ratio * 100

# Error budget remaining
slo:http_availability:error_budget_remaining

# Days until error budget exhausted (at current burn rate)
(slo:http_availability:error_budget_remaining / 100) * 28
/
slo:http_availability:burn_rate_5m
```

## Multi-Window Burn Rate Alerts

```yaml
# Combination of short and long windows reduces false positives
rules:
  - alert: SLOBurnRateHigh
    expr: |
      (
        slo:http_availability:burn_rate_1h > 14.4
        and
        slo:http_availability:burn_rate_5m > 14.4
      )
      or
      (
        slo:http_availability:burn_rate_6h > 6
        and
        slo:http_availability:burn_rate_30m > 6
      )
    labels:
      severity: critical
```

## SLO Review Process

### Weekly Review
- Current SLO compliance
- Error budget status
- Trend analysis
- Incident impact

### Monthly Review
- SLO achievement
- Error budget usage
- Incident postmortems
- SLO adjustments

### Quarterly Review
- SLO relevance
- Target adjustments
- Process improvements
- Tooling enhancements

## Best Practices

1. **Start with user-facing services**
2. **Use multiple SLIs** (availability, latency, etc.)
3. **Set achievable SLOs** (don't aim for 100%)
4. **Implement multi-window alerts** to reduce noise
5. **Track error budget** consistently
6. **Review SLOs regularly**
7. **Document SLO decisions**
8. **Align with business goals**
9. **Automate SLO reporting**
10. **Use SLOs for prioritization**

## Reference Files

- [inline example](#setting-slo-targets) - SLO definition template
- `references/slo-definitions.md` - SLO definition patterns
- `references/error-budget.md` - Error budget calculations

## Related Skills

- `prometheus-configuration` - For metric collection
- `grafana-dashboards` - For SLO visualization

## Limitations
- Use this skill only when the task clearly matches the scope described above.
- Do not treat the output as a substitute for environment-specific validation, testing, or expert review.
- Stop and ask for clarification if required inputs, permissions, safety boundaries, or success criteria are missing.