Module Title: dgt_sre08 – SRE Introduction
Description:
“SRE Introduction” is an introductory module on Site Reliability Engineering. It is intended for both technical and non-technical participants who wish to understand the principles, practices, and culture behind ensuring high availability and reliability in modern software systems.
Like every module of our Natural Language DevOps/SRE Academy, this one starts from solid theory: SLIs, SLOs, error budgets and the reasoning behind them. When we move to practice, you will not write queries or scripts: you will ask the machine, in natural language, to compute an SLI from real metrics, check an error budget or draft an alert, and you will judge whether what it produced measures what really matters to users.
Module Objectives:
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Understand the Role of SRE: Learn what it means to be a Site Reliability Engineer and how this role works with other teams such as development and operations.
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Learn Core SRE Principles: Study key concepts such as error budgets, service level objectives (SLOs), and site reliability metrics.
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Explore Automation and Tooling: Learn about the tools SREs use to automate processes and manage complex systems, and into how to direct an AI agent that operates them and verify its actions.
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Cultivate a Reliability Culture: Understand how to foster a culture of shared responsibility for system uptime and performance within an organization.
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Problem-Solving Skills: Develop the critical thinking needed to troubleshoot and resolve issues in production, including questioning the machine’s diagnosis when the evidence does not support it.
Module Content:
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Introduction to SRE: Historical context, evolution, and the importance of Site Reliability Engineering.
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Key Concepts & Metrics: Understanding SLIs (Service Level Indicators), SLOs, and error budgets.
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Automation Practices: Tools for monitoring, alerting, and incident management; automation described in natural language, carried out by the machine and reviewed by you.
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Capacity Planning and Incident Management: Strategies to ensure system resilience under load and effective incident response.
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Culture of Reliability: Building systems with reliability in mind from the outset and promoting a culture that values uptime.
Consideration:
As part of this module, we will reference “Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems,” often considered the foundational text for understanding SRE. The book describes how one of the world’s largest tech companies approaches reliability engineering, with practical advice and case studies relevant to both newcomers and experienced practitioners in the field.
Target Audience:
This module is intended for software engineers, system administrators, IT professionals, and anyone interested in enhancing their understanding of SRE practices. Prior experience with programming or systems administration may be helpful but is not required, since the practical work is done by instructing the machine in natural language.
The students can push their exercises to the Academy DevOps & SRE Git project. For this module, create a folder with your username as its name in the following subfolder: https://github.com/Garanti-Del-Talento/gdt_academy