Error budget and burn rate

Topic: Monitoring basics

Error budget is 1 minus SLO. Burn rate is how fast you consume it. Alert on high burn rate to prevent exhausting budget. Use when you have SLOs and want to alert before breach.

Intent: How-to

Quick answer

  • Error budget = 1 - SLO. Example: 99.9 percent SLO means 0.1 percent budget per month. Burn rate = consumption per hour or day.
  • Alert when burn rate would exhaust budget in X hours. Fast burn and slow burn alerts. Page on fast burn.
  • Use budget for release and change decisions. Freeze or slow down when budget low. Review and reset each period.

Prerequisites

Steps

  1. Compute budget

    From SLO compute budget for window. Track consumption (errors or downtime).

  2. Burn rate alerts

    Alert when burn rate high. Fast burn for imminent exhaustion. Slow burn for trend.

  3. Use budget

    Gate releases or changes on budget. Freeze when low. Reset and review each period.

Summary

Compute error budget from SLO; alert on burn rate; use budget for release and change decisions.

Prerequisites

Steps

Step 1: Compute budget

Budget from SLO; track consumption.

Step 2: Burn rate alerts

Alert on fast and slow burn; page on fast burn.

Step 3: Use budget

Gate releases; freeze when low; review each period.

Verification

  • Budget tracked; burn alerts fire; decisions use budget.

Troubleshooting

Budget always zero — Improve reliability or relax SLO. Too many burn alerts — Tune sensitivity.

Next steps

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