Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is a practice that combines software development and IT operations intending to create highly reliable and scalable software systems. SREs are responsible for ensuring the availability, performance, and stability of the systems they support.
SRE is a natural evolution of the DevOps movement, which aims to break down the barriers between development and operations teams. SRE takes this idea further by applying software engineering principles and practices to the entire system lifecycle, from design and development to deployment and maintenance.
SREs use tools and techniques to achieve their goals, including automation, monitoring, and testing. They work closely with developers to ensure that code is designed with reliability in mind and that new features are rolled out in a safe and controlled manner. SREs also work closely with operations teams to identify and address issues before they become critical.
One of the core tenets of SRE is the concept of “error budgets.” An error budget is a measure of the acceptable level of downtime or other system failures over a given period. SREs, use error budgets to balance the need for innovation and new features with the need for system reliability. If the error budget is exceeded, development teams may need to focus on improving system reliability rather than adding new features.
In summary, SRE is a software engineering practice that emphasizes reliability and scalability. SREs use technology to ensure that systems are highly available, performant, and stable. SREs work closely with development and operations teams to ensure that new features are rolled out safely and that issues are identified and addressed before they become critical.