Choose the two incorrect options regarding SLOs (service level objectives) and SLAs...
Accenture technical mcq question, verified with a worked answer. Free to practise - no sign-up.
Choose the two incorrect options regarding SLOs (service level objectives) and SLAs (service level agreements) in the context of site reliability engineering.
Show answer & explanation
In SRE terminology, SLOs are internal performance targets set by the engineering team, while SLAs are customer-facing contractual commitments. Legal liability arises from breaching an SLA (not SLO), making option A incorrect. Option C is backwards: SLAs are typically set at less stringent values than SLOs to provide a safety margin and allow for intentional innovation/chaos engineering within error budgets. Options B and D are correct: teams can deliberately cause controlled outages within error budgets to test resilience (B), and SLAs should consider competitive landscape, engineering feasibility, and requirements (D).
Step-by-step Derivation:
- Understand the SLO vs SLA distinction: SLO = internal engineering target, SLA = external contractual promise.
- Legal liability: Only SLA breaches trigger legal consequences. An SLO breach is internal and does not directly expose the company to legal damages. → Option A is INCORRECT.
- Error budget & intentional outages: Within SLO/SLA margins, teams are permitted to intentionally degrade service for testing, deployments, or chaos engineering. This is core SRE practice. → Option B is CORRECT.
- SLA vs SLO difficulty: SLAs must be achievable with high confidence and typically exceed SLOs to provide engineering headroom. Setting SLAs harder than SLOs would be counterintuitive and risky. → Option C is INCORRECT.
- SLA factors: SLAs are set by balancing customer expectations, competitive benchmarks, and what the engineering team can realistically deliver. → Option D is CORRECT.
Conclusion: A and C are the two incorrect options.