SLOs and SLIs best practices for systems

At New Relic, setting Service Level Indicators (SLIs) and Service Level Objectives (SLOs) is crucial for effective site reliability engineering (SRE), providing a framework to assess system availability and performance across complex software architectures. The post explains how New Relic uses a simplified version of their architecture to demonstrate the practical application of SLIs and SLOs, emphasizing the importance of defining these metrics at system boundaries rather than individual components to efficiently manage reliability. The article guides readers through the process of setting SLIs and SLOs using the New Relic platform, highlighting its automated tools for establishing baselines and customizing SLIs/SLOs. It stresses the importance of clear definitions for availability, utilizing plain-language metrics, and prioritizing customer experience, particularly for UI interactions. Additionally, the network tier is emphasized as a critical dependency requiring higher SLOs to ensure overall platform reliability. The piece concludes with a reminder of the iterative nature of reliability practices and encourages leveraging New Relic's tools to streamline the setup of service levels.