Create a Service Level Objective (SLO)

Note
This feature is available as part of the Honeycomb Enterprise and Pro plans.

When you create a Service Level Objective (SLO), you must define it for a single Honeycomb dataset.

Define Your SLO 

When creating an SLO, you must define a service level indicator (SLI) that your SLO will use to evaluate your level of success. In the process of determining a suitable SLI, you should identify qualified events, which are events that contain information about the SLI.

Keeping these qualified events in mind, ask yourself: “Over what period of time do I expect what percentage of qualified events to pass my SLO?” For example, “I expect that 99% of qualified events will succeed over every 30 days”.

In this example, 99% is the target percentage of success and 30 days is the time period being measured. Your SLO will use your SLI alongside your identified target percentage and time period to evaluate status.

As you select a level, base it off your current state, which you can find out by doing a count query grouped by your SLI derived column after it has been created.

Create Your SLO 

To create an SLO:

  1. From the left sidebar, select SLOs.

  2. Select New SLO.

  3. Enter details for your SLO:

    Field Description
    Dataset/service Dataset(s) or service(s) to which you want your SLO to apply. You can select up to 10. If your SLO applies to only one dataset or service and you have already created an SLI as a Derived Column, you must create your SLO inside the same dataset that contains that Derived Column. If your SLO applies to multiple datasets(s) or service(s), your SLI must be created as a shared Derived Column.
    Name Name of your SLO.
    Description Information that can help provide context or purpose for the SLO. You may use Markdown to insert links and format text.
    Service Level Indicator (SLI) SLI, expressed as a Derived Column, that your SLO will use to evaluate your level of success. If you have already defined your SLI in a Derived Column, select it from the dropdown. Otherwise, select + New SLI and create your SLI. If you create a new SLI from within this SLO, it will be created at the environment level, so you may use it with multiple services or datasets if so desired.
    Time Period Time period (in days) to which this SLO applies.
    Target Percentage Target percentage of events you expect to succeed.
    SLO creation dialog
  4. Select Create SLO.

Next Steps 

Now that you have an SLO, you can:

Best Practices 

To learn about best practices for using SLOs and SLIs, visit Best Practices for Service Level Objectives (SLOs).