Publisher's Synopsis
With the growing complexity of application development, organizations are increasingly adopting methodologies that enable reliable, scalable software.
DevOps and site reliability engineering (SRE) are two approaches that enhance the product release cycle through enhanced collaboration, automation, and monitoring. Both approaches utilize automation and collaboration to help teams build resilient and reliable software-but there are fundamental differences in what these approaches offer and how they operate.
So, this article delves into the purpose of DevOps and SRE. We'll look at both approaches, including benefits, differences, and key elements.
Site reliability engineering (SRE)
SRE provides a unique approach to application lifecycle and service management by incorporating various aspects of software development into IT operations.
SRE was first developed in 2003 to create IT infrastructure architecture that meets the needs of enterprise-scale systems. With SRE, IT infrastructure is broken down into basic, abstract components that can be provisioned with software development best practices. This enables teams to use automation to solve most problems associated with managing applications in production.
SRE uses three Service Level Commitments to measure how well a system performs:
- Service level agreements (SLAs) define the required reliability, performance, and latency of the system as desired by end users.
- Service level objectives (SLOs) target values and goals set by SRE teams that should be met to satisfy SLAs.
- Service level indicators (SLIs) measure specific metrics and aspects that show how much a system conforms to the SLOs. Typical SLIs include request latency, system throughput, lead time, development frequency, mean time to restore (MTTR), and availability error rate.
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The Site Reliability Engineer role
SRE essentially creates a new role: the site reliability engineer. An SRE is tasked with ensuring seamless collaboration between IT operations and development teams through the enhancement and automation of routine processes. Some core responsibilities of an SRE include:
- Developing, configuring, and deploying software to be used by operations teams
- Handling support escalation issues
- Conducting and reporting on incident reviews
- Developing system documentation
- Change management
- Determining and validating new features and updates
