Overview
The Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Foundation℠ course provides a comprehensive introduction to the fundamental principles and practices that enable organizations to scale critical services in a reliable and cost-effective manner. Implementing an SRE approach involves a shift in organizational structure, a renewed emphasis on engineering and automation, and the adoption of modern operational paradigms.
This course explores the origins and future direction of SRE, offering practical tools, methods, and real-world case studies to help participants drive reliability and stability across teams. Learners will gain actionable insights—such as how to define, set, and measure Service Level Objectives (SLOs)—that can be immediately applied in their work environments.
Developed using key industry resources, insights from SRE thought leaders, and best practices from organizations successfully implementing SRE, this course delivers essential knowledge for teams beginning their SRE journey.
Completion of the course prepares participants to confidently take the SRE Foundation certification exam, governed by the DevOps Institute.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
The learning objectives for the SRE Foundation course include a practical understanding of:
● The history of SRE and its emergence at Google
● The inter-relationship of SRE with DevOps and other popular frameworks
● The underlying principles behind SRE
● Service Level Objectives (SLO’s) and their user focus
● Service Level Indicators (SLI’s) and the modern monitoring landscape
● Error budgets and the associated error budget policies
● Toil and its effect on an organization’s productivity
● Some practical steps that can help to eliminate toil
● Observability as something to indicate the health of a service
● SRE tools, automation techniques and the importance of security
● Anti-fragility, our approach to failure and failure testing
● The organizational impact that introducing SRE brings
AUDIENCE
The target audience for the SRE Foundation course are professionals including:
● Anyone starting or leading a move towards increased reliability
● Anyone interested in modern IT leadership and organizational change approaches
● Business Managers
● Business Stakeholders
● Change Agents
● Consultants
● DevOps Practitioners
● IT Directors
● IT Managers
● IT Team Leaders
● Product Owners
● Scrum Masters
● Software Engineers
● Site Reliability Engineers
● System Integrators
● Tool Providers
LEARNER MATERIALS
● Sixteen (16) hours of instructor-led training and exercise facilitation
● Learner Manual (excellent post-class reference) including:
○ Course slideware
○ Value Added Resources
○ Glossary
● Participation in exercises and discussions designed to apply concepts
● Case stories
● Access to additional sources of information and communities
CERTIFICATION EXAM
Successfully passing (65%) the 60-minute examination, consisting of 40 multiple-choice
questions, leads to the SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) Foundation certificate. The
certification is governed and maintained by the DevOps Institute.
COURSE OUTLINE
● Course Introduction
○ Course Goals
○ Course Agenda
● Module 1: SRE Principles & Practices
○ What is Site Reliability Engineering?
○ SRE & DevOps: What is the Difference?
○ SRE Principles & Practices
● Module 2: Service Level Objectives & Error Budgets
○ Service Level Objectives (SLO’s)
○ Error Budgets
○ Error Budget Policies
● Module 3: Reducing Toil
○ What is Toil?
○ Why is Toil Bad?
○ Doing Something About Toil
● Module 4: Monitoring & Service Level Indicators
○ Service Level Indicators (SLI’s)
○ Monitoring
○ Observability
● Module 5: SRE Tools & Automation
○ Automation Defined
○ Automation Focus
○ Hierarchy of Automation Types
○ Secure Automation
○ Automation Tools
● Module 6: Anti-Fragility & Learning from Failure
○ Why Learn from Failure
○ Benefits of Anti-Fragility
○ Shifting the Organizational Balance
● Module 7: Organizational Impact of SRE
○ Why Organizations Embrace SRE
○ Patterns for SRE Adoption
○ On-Call Necessities
○ Blameless Post-Mortems
○ SRE & Scale
● Module 8: SRE, Other Frameworks, The Future
○ SRE & Other Frameworks
○ The Future
● Additional Sources of Information
● Exam Preparations
○ Exam Requirements, Question Weighting, and Terminology List
Sample Exam Review
