Wikipedia

Site reliability engineering

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is a subset of web development that encompasses principles and practices that integrate software engineering with IT infrastructure and operations[1] to enhance system scalability and reliability. SRE shares similarities with DevOps, which focuses on software development and operational practices.

History

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The field of SRE originated at Google with Ben Treynor Sloss,[2][3] who founded a site reliability team in 2003.[4] The concept expanded within the software development industry, leading various companies to employ site reliability engineers.[5] By March 2016, Google had over 1,000 site reliability engineers on staff.[6] Dedicated SRE teams are common at larger web development companies. DevOps teams sometimes serve the dual purpose of SRE in midsize and smaller companies.[5] Organizations that have adopted the concept include Airbnb, Dropbox, IBM,[7] LinkedIn,[8] Netflix,[6] and Wikimedia.[9]

Definition

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Site reliability engineering as a job role may be performed by individual contributors or organized in teams. Site reliability engineers are responsible for a combination of the following within a broader engineering organization: system availability, latency, performance, efficiency, change management, monitoring, emergency response, and capacity planning.[10] Site reliability engineers often have backgrounds in software engineering, system engineering, or system administration.[11] Focuses of SRE include automation, system design, and improvements to system resilience.[11]

The set of principles and practices in site reliability engineering can be performed by anyone. Although other team members should carry out good practices, as in security engineering, a company may eventually hire specialists and engineers for the job.[citation needed]

SRE is considered a specific implementation of DevOps;[12] SRE focuses specifically on building reliable systems, whereas DevOps covers a broad scope.[13][14][15] Despite having different focuses, some companies have re-branded their operations teams to SRE teams with little meaningful change.[5]

Principles and practices

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There have been multiple attempts to define a canonical list of site reliability engineering principles, but while consensus is lacking, the following characteristics are included in most definitions:[1][16]

  • Automation of repetitive tasks for cost-effectiveness
  • Limit the pursuit of reliability to the pre-defined reliability goals. Defining these reliability goals is one of the SRE practices (see list of practices below).
  • Design of systems with a bias toward the reduction of risks to availability, latency, and efficiency.
  • Observability, the ability to ask arbitrary questions about a system without having to know ahead of time what to ask.[17]

The site reliability engineering practices also vary widely, but the list below is relatively commonly seen as at least partially implemented:

Implementations

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SRE teams collaborate with other departments within organizations to implement principles effectively. Below is an overview of common practices:[18]

Kitchen Sink, a.k.a. "Everything SRE"

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Kitchen Sink refers to the expansive and often unbounded scope of services and workflows that SRE teams oversee. Unlike traditional roles with clearly defined boundaries, SREs are tasked with various responsibilities, including system performance optimization, incident management, and automation. This holistic approach allows SREs to address multiple challenges, ensuring that systems run efficiently and evolve in response to changing demands and complexities. By embracing this comprehensive perspective, SRE teams are meant to promote continuous improvement and resilience.

Infrastructure

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Infrastructure SRE teams focus on maintaining and improving the reliability of systems that support other teams' workflows. While they sometimes collaborate with platform engineering teams, their primary responsibility is ensuring up-time, performance, and efficiency. Platform teams, on the other hand, primarily develop the software and systems used across the organization. While reliability is a goal for both, platform teams prioritize creating and maintaining the tools and services used by internal stakeholders, whereas Infrastructure SRE teams are tasked with ensuring those systems run smoothly and meet reliability standards.

Tools

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SRE teams utilize a variety of tools to measure, maintain, and enhance system reliability. These tools play a role in monitoring performance, identifying issues, and facilitating proactive maintenance. For instance, Nagios Core is widely used for system monitoring and alerting, while Prometheus (software) is popular for collecting and querying metrics in cloud-native environments.

Product or application

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SRE teams dedicated to specific products or applications are common in large organizations[19]. These teams are responsible for ensuring the reliability, scalability, and performance of key services. In larger companies, it's typical to have multiple SRE teams, each focusing on different products or applications, ensuring that each area receives specialized attention to meet performance and availability targets.

Embedded

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In an embedded model, individual SREs or small SRE pairs are integrated within software engineering teams. These SREs work closely with developers, applying core SRE principles, such as automation, monitoring, and incident response—directly to the software development lifecycle. This approach helps improve reliability, performance and collaboration between SREs and developers.

Consulting

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Consulting SRE teams specialize in advising organizations on the implementation of SRE principles and practices. Typically composed of seasoned SREs with extensive experience across various implementations, these teams provide insights and guidance tailored to specific organizational needs. When working directly with clients, these SREs are often referred to as 'Customer Reliability Engineers.'

In large organizations that have adopted SRE, a hybrid model is common[citation needed]. This model includes various implementations, such as multiple Product/Application SRE teams dedicated to addressing the unique reliability needs of different products. An Infrastructure SRE team may collaborate with a Platform engineering group to achieve shared reliability goals for a unified platform that supports all products and applications.

Industry

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Since 2014, the USENIX organization has hosted the annual SREcon conference, bringing together site reliability engineers from various industries. This conference is a platform for professionals to share knowledge, explore best practices, and discuss trends in site reliability engineering.[20]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Evaluating where your team lies on the SRE spectrum". Google Cloud Blog. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  2. ^ Hill, Patrick. "Love DevOps? Wait until you meet SRE". Atlassian. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
  3. ^ "What is SRE?". Red Hat. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
  4. ^ Treynor, Ben (2014). "Keys to SRE". USENIX SREcon14. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
  5. ^ a b c Gossett, Stephen (June 1, 2020). "What Is a Site Reliability Engineer? What Does an SRE Do?". Built In. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
  6. ^ a b Fischer, Donald (March 2, 2016). "Are site reliability engineers the next data scientists?". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
  7. ^ "Site Reliability Engineering". IBM Cloud Education. IBM. November 12, 2020. Retrieved June 21, 2021.
  8. ^ "Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)". engineering.linkedin.com. Retrieved March 12, 2024.
  9. ^ "SRE - Wikitech". wikitech.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 2021-10-17.
  10. ^ Treynor, Ben. "In Conversation" (Interview). Interviewed by Niall Murphy. Google Site Reliability Engineering.
  11. ^ a b Jones, Chris; Underwood, Todd; Nukala, Shylaja (June 2015). "Hiring Site Reliability Engineers" (PDF). ;login:. Vol. 40, no. 3. pp. 35–39. Retrieved June 17, 2021.
  12. ^ Dave Harrison (9 Oct 2018). "Interview with Betsy Beyer, Stephen Thorne of Google". Retrieved 24 July 2024.
  13. ^ Beyer, Betsy; Jones, Chris; Petoff, Jennifer; Murphy, Niall, eds. (2016). Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media. ISBN 978-1-4919-5118-7. OCLC 945577030.
  14. ^ Vargo, Seth; Fong-Jones, Liz (March 1, 2018). What's the Difference Between DevOps and SRE? (class SRE implements DevOps) (Video). Google.
  15. ^ "What is SRE? - SRE Explained - AWS". Amazon Web Services, Inc. Retrieved 2022-11-05.
  16. ^ "The 7 SRE Principles [And How to Put Them Into Practice]". www.blameless.com. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  17. ^ "Learn about observability | Honeycomb". docs.honeycomb.io. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  18. ^ "SRE at Google: How to structure your SRE team". Google Cloud Blog. Retrieved 2021-06-26.
  19. ^ "SRE at Google: How to structure your SRE team". Google Cloud Blog. Retrieved 2024-11-11.
  20. ^ "Usenix SREcon". USENIX. 2021. Retrieved June 17, 2021.

Further reading

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