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Getting started
Navigate to the SLO page: Monitors › Service Level Objectives
Start thinking from the perspective of your user:
- How are your users interacting with your application?
- What is their journey through the application?
- Which parts of your infrastructure do these journeys interact with?
- What are they expecting from your systems and what are they hoping to accomplish?
Select the relevant SLI
STEP 1
Response/Request
| |
|---|
| Availability | Could the server respond to the request successfully? |
| Latency | How long did it take for the server to respond to the request? |
| Throughput | How many requests can be handled? |
Storage
| |
|---|
| Availability | Can the data be accessed on demand? |
| Latency | How long does it take to read or write data? |
| Durability | Is the data still there when it is needed? |
Pipeline
| |
|---|
| Correctness | Was the right data returned? |
| Freshness | How long does it take for new data or processed results to appear? |
STEP 2
Do you require a time-based or count-based SLI?
Time-based SLIs use Datadog monitors:
Example: the latency of all user requests should be less than 250 ms 99% of the time in any
30-day window.
- Select a single monitor,
- Select multiple monitors (up to 20), or
- Select a single multi alert monitor and pick specific monitor groups (up to 20) to include in
the SLO calculation
If you need to create a new monitor go to the Monitor create page.
Count-based SLIs use metrics in your Datadog account and do not require a monitor:
Example: 99% of requests should complete in less than 250 ms over a 30-day window.
Implementing your SLIs
- Custom metrics (for example, counters)
- Integration metrics (for example, load balancer, http requests)
- Datadog APM (for example, errors, latency on services and resources)
- Datadog Logs (for example, metrics generated from logs for a count of particular occurrence)
Set your target objective and time window
- Select your target:
99%, 99.5%, 99.9%, 99.95%, or whatever makes sense for your requirements. - Select your time window: over the last
7, 30, or 90 days
Name, describe, and tag your SLOs
- Name your SLO.
- Add a description: describe what the SLO is tracking and why it is important for your end user experience. You can also add links to dashboards for reference.
- Add tags: tagging by
team and service is a common practice.
View and search
Use tags to search for your SLOs from the SLO list view.
Further Reading
Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:
