ERROR-BUDGET

SRE / DevOps concept Error budget (SRE).

Definition

Error budget is the inverse of SLO: if SLO = 99.9% on 30 days, error budget = 0.1% ≈ 43 minutes of downtime. As long as budget is not exhausted, the team can deploy freely. If consumed, freeze deploys and focus on reliability. Aligns dev (velocity) and ops (stability) incentives.

Origin

Concept formalised in Google SRE Book chapter 3.

Example in context

EDI gateway with 99.95% monthly SLO → 21.9 min/month budget. If breach, freeze AS2 releases until end of period.

Related terms

• SLO — objective source of the budget.