What is an SRE and how does it relate to DevOps?

Question

What is an SRE (Site Reliability Engineer) and how does it relate to DevOps?

Answer

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is a discipline that incorporates aspects of software engineering and applies them to infrastructure and operations problems. The main goals are to create scalable and highly reliable software systems.

SRE can be viewed as an implementation of DevOps with some key differences in the approach to change management, incident response, and automation.

Key aspects of SRE:

1. Service Level Objectives (SLOs) - Setting targets for system reliability
2. Error Budgets - Allowable amount of system downtime or errors
3. Eliminating Toil - Automating repetitive manual tasks
4. Monitoring and Observability - Comprehensive system visibility
5. Incident Management - Structured approach to handling production issues
6. Postmortem Culture - Learning from failures without blame

Comparison with DevOps:

• DevOps is more of a philosophy or cultural approach to software development and operations
• SRE is a specific job role and set of practices implemented by Google that embodies DevOps principles
• SRE tends to be more prescriptive about how to implement reliability practices
• DevOps is broader and can be adapted to various organizational structures
• SRE introduces specific metrics like SLOs and error budgets to make reliability measurable
• Both emphasize automation, monitoring, and breaking down silos between development and operations