Practice Free DevOps-SRE Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Foundation v1.2 Exam Questions Answers With Explanation

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The term “wisdom of production” refers to the insights gained from real systems running under actual production conditions. Only production environments exhibit real user behavior, real workloads, true performance characteristics, and authentic failure modes. This concept is rooted in the SRE philosophy that production is the ultimate source of truth for understanding system behavior.

From the SRE Workbook, Chapter “Monitoring”:

“Only production provides the full truth about how a system behaves under real workloads. Production is the ultimate source of wisdom about the system.”

This makes clear that wisdom gained from production is indispensable. Testing and staging environments cannot reproduce all real-world variables, usage patterns, and failure pathways.

Why the other options are incorrect:

A describes engineering approaches but does not define “wisdom of production.”

C is incorrect because staging environments do not provide production wisdom.

D relates to automation strategy, not production insights.

Thus, the accurate meaning of the term is B — The wisdom gained from something running in production.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

In SRE incident management, Google defines several formal roles during a major incident, including Incident Commander (IC), Communications Lead, Operations/Responder, and Planning Specialist. According to the SRE Workbook: “The Planning Lead is responsible for maintaining the source-of-truth incident state document, tracking action items, and ensuring the IC has the current situation overview.” (SRE Workbook – Chapter: Incident Management). This document contains timelines, changes, decisions, diagnostics, and action items—all crucial for reducing cognitive load during high-stress situations.

Option C—Planning Specialist—is therefore correct.

Option A (Logistics Specialist) is not defined as a core SRE incident role.

Option B (Communications Lead) manages outward communication, not the live incident log.

Option D (Incident Commander) leads the incident but delegates documentation to the planning role.

Hence, option C is the only answer that aligns with SRE’s defined responsibilities.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Google’s SRE definition is explicit: “Site Reliability Engineering is what happens when you ask a software engineer to design an operations team.” (SRE Book – Introduction). This clearly defines SRE as a software engineering approach applied to operational problems. The goal is to use software techniques—automation, coding, testing, version control, CI/CD, observability—to improve reliability and reduce toil. The book emphasizes: “SRE applies software engineering to operations work.” (SRE Book – What Is SRE?).

Option C is the only answer fully aligned with the official definition.

Options A, B, and D do not correspond to the SRE definition provided by Google.

Thus, the correct missing phrase is software engineering.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

A Service Level Indicator (SLI) is a measurement of some aspect of reliability (e.g., latency, availability, quality). One of its defining characteristics is that it must be measured over a specific time window. Without a time horizon, the SLI has no actionable meaning.

From the Site Reliability Engineering Book, Chapter “Service Level Indicators”:

“An SLI is a quantitative measure of some aspect of the level of service that is provided. SLIs are evaluated over a specific period of time in order to understand reliability as experienced by the user.”

The SRE Workbook further states:

“Every SLI must define a measurement window. Without a time horizon, the indicator cannot be used to calculate SLO compliance.”

Why the other options are incorrect:

A SLIs do not need to appear in an SLA; SLAs are external contracts, SLOs/SLIs are internal engineering tools.

B SLIs may include client-side, server-side, or network metrics depending on what reflects user experience.

D SLI agreement is not defined by SRE vs. Agile teams; it is defined by business and user need.

Thus, the correct answer is C.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Containers provide a major advantage that aligns with SRE: portability and environment consistency. The SRE Workbook describes containers as: “lightweight, portable units that encapsulate applications and dependencies, ensuring consistent behavior across environments.” This independence from the host OS environment enables predictable deployments and simplifies automation, scaling, and orchestration—especially when used with Kubernetes.

Option A captures this exact benefit: portability and independence from the host OS.

Option B is incorrect—containers do not reduce the number of developers required.

Option C incorrectly claims that efficiency comes from virtual machines; containers are typically more efficient because they avoid VM overhead, not leverage it.

Option D is incorrect—containers do not “inherit” security automatically; in fact, they require additional security controls.

Thus, A is the correct answer.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

SRE defines capacity planning as the discipline of ensuring that a system has enough resources to meet expected demand, both now and in the future. The SRE Book states: “Capacity planning ensures that services have sufficient resources available to meet reliability and performance targets, accounting for growth, trends, and forecasted usage.” (SRE Book – Chapter: Capacity Planning). This involves forecasting workloads, analyzing trends, and creating plans to scale infrastructure so that service-level objectives can continue to be met.

Option C correctly describes capacity planning as creating a resource management plan to meet demand.

Option A refers to capacity monitoring, not planning.

Option B reflects generic resource management or cloud provider operations, not SRE capacity planning.

Option D refers to determining maximum capacity, which is a measurement activity—not full planning.

Thus, C is the correct SRE-aligned answer.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Service Level Objectives (SLOs) are directly tied to user experience, and this connection is central to the SRE philosophy. The purpose of an SLO is to define how well a service must perform to keep users satisfied, without exceeding what is necessary or economically practical.

The Site Reliability Engineering Book, Chapter “Service Level Objectives,” states:

“The most important directive when defining SLOs is that they must reflect the expectations and needs of the users of the service.”

Similarly, the SRE Workbook, Chapter “Implementing SLOs,” highlights:

“SLOs are a tool to measure and control the reliability as experienced by the user.”

This makes it clear that SLOs are fundamentally user-centric. They are not based on internal engineering preferences, management goals, or operational convenience.

Why the other options are incorrect:

B. Management approval — SLOs are not driven by management goals but by user needs.

C. Change success rate — While related to reliability practices, change success is not the basis of SLO creation.

D. Toil reduction — Toil is unrelated to defining service-level targets.

Therefore, the correct answer is A.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

A Network Reliability Engineer (NRE) is a specialized reliability role focused on applying SRE practices to networking. They use software engineering, SDLC concepts, and automation to manage networks at scale, including SDNs.

Google describes NRE as:

“Network Reliability Engineering applies SRE principles to network management, treating network configuration as code and automating changes safely.”

— Google Reliability Engineering Guidance

Responsibilities include:

Codifying SDN configurations

Automating network deployment

Testing network changes through CI/CD

Reducing network-related outages

Thus, the correct answer is B.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

When a team exceeds its error budget, SRE practice requires applying error budget policies that restrict feature releases and shift focus toward reliability improvement. The idea is to prevent further degradation of user experience and ensure the service meets the agreed reliability targets.

The Site Reliability Engineering Book, Chapter “Service Level Objectives,” states:

“If the service exceeds its error budget, all new feature launches or risky changes are halted until reliability returns to acceptable levels. Engineering work should be directed toward addressing the causes of the budget overrun.”

This aligns with option A, which describes a reliability-focused response during sprint planning. Limiting sprint planning to post-mortem action items and reliability improvements is a direct application of error budget policies.

Additional guidance from the SRE Workbook:

“Error budget burn should directly influence decision-making. When the budget is exhausted, the team must focus on remediation work rather than new features.”

Why the other options are incorrect:

B Reviewing the error budget’s realism can be done periodically, but it is not the immediate consequence of a breach.

C Extending the error budget invalidates its purpose and is discouraged.

D Ignoring the error budget contradicts the entire SRE model and Google’s official guidance.

Therefore, A is the only correct answer.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Although Kaizen originates from Japanese lean culture, its mindset aligns strongly with SRE's continuous improvement philosophy. The SRE Book emphasizes a culture where teams identify problems, prioritize them, fix them, and share knowledge, stating that: “Incremental improvements and learning from failures lead to resilient systems, and teams must continuously refine processes and technology.” (SRE Book – Chapters: “Postmortem Culture,” “Eliminating Toil”). Option C captures all key Kaizen elements—problem recognition, prioritization, solution, and knowledge sharing—mirroring SRE’s blameless postmortem and iterative improvement practices.

Option A emphasizes learning but lacks problem ownership.

Option B focuses too narrowly on root cause analysis.

Option D emphasizes experimentation but misses prioritization and lesson-sharing.

Thus, C is the best match for a Kaizen mindset within the SRE framework.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Achieving high availability in SRE practice is driven by accurate measurement of what matters and fast detection and correction of issues. According to Google’s Site Reliability Engineering Book, measurement of critical user-facing signals is foundational: “SLIs must capture the aspects of the service that are most critical to users and must be measured with high accuracy.” (SRE Book – Chapter: Service Level Objectives). Without measuring the critical aspects of a service—latency, errors, availability, and quality—teams cannot make informed decisions or detect degradation effectively.

The SRE book also emphasizes reducing MTTR (Mean Time to Repair) and tightening the feedback loop between detection and correction. Google states: “Reducing the time between detection and mitigation is one of the most effective levers for improving availability.” (SRE Book – Chapters on Incident Response & Monitoring). Rapid identification and resolution directly improve a system’s availability and resilience.

Option D (1 and 4) is the only choice that correctly reflects SRE principles.

Measuring critical aspects ? essential for correct SLO/SLI alignment

Maintaining a short interval between detection and correction ? drives higher availability

Options including staff performance measurement or generic development relationships are not mentioned as availability-driving factors in the SRE literature.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

A Heritage Reliability Engineer (HRE) focuses on improving and stabilizing legacy systems, including batch processing systems and older architectures that need modernization. Google uses this concept when applying SRE principles to older platforms that cannot be easily migrated.

From Google’s reliability role expansions:

“Heritage Reliability Engineering applies SRE practices to legacy systems, improving batch processing, stability, and helping teams re-platform to modern architectures.”

This role is specifically aligned with:

Batch job optimization

Migration from legacy systems

Bringing older platforms closer to SRE standards

Thus, the correct answer is B.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Defense-in-Depth (DiD) is a layered security strategy referenced in SRE’s discussions of secure infrastructure and resilience. The perimeter layer is responsible for controlling and monitoring traffic flowing into and out of the network from external sources, such as the public Internet. This includes firewalls, intrusion detection systems, load balancers, and boundary network controls.

While SRE focuses primarily on reliability, the SRE Book stresses the importance of resilient system boundaries: “Perimeter protections are critical where external traffic enters the system.” (SRE Book – Security and Infrastructure considerations).

Option C correctly identifies the Perimeter Layer as the network boundary where data flows in/out from other networks—including the Internet.

Option A (Host layer) secures individual machines.

Option B (Physical layer) refers to hardware, power, racks, etc.

Option D (Data layer) protects stored data, not ingress/egress traffic.

Thus, C is correct.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The SRE Book defines the Four Golden Signals of monitoring as Latency, Traffic, Errors, and Saturation. Specifically, it describes “Errors” as: “the rate of requests that fail, whether explicitly, implicitly, or by policy.” (SRE Book – Chapter: Monitoring Distributed Systems). This includes HTTP 5xx responses, timeouts, and requests served but not meeting success criteria.

This definition matches option B exactly.

Option A describes latency, not errors.

Option C describes traffic.

Option D describes saturation (resource usage).

Therefore, B is the correct and SRE-accurate description of the golden signal for errors.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Google’s SRE model includes the role of Launch Coordination Engineer (LCE), described in the SRE Book as: “an engineer who serves as the central liaison between product teams, SRE, and other stakeholders to ensure safe and reliable launches.” (SRE Book – Chapter: Production Environment & Launch Coordination). Their responsibilities include assessing launch readiness, ensuring SLOs are defined, facilitating cross-team communication, and managing risk associated with new service rollouts.

Option C precisely reflects this role: acting as a consultant and liaison across all parties involved in a launch.

Option A focuses on server engineering, which is not the focus of LCE.

Option B describes application-level performance work, unrelated to cross-team launch facilitation.

Option D describes operational tuning, not coordination.

Thus, C is the correct answer, capturing the SRE-defined launch coordination function.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Burning the error budget to zero — strategically, not accidentally — helps ensure the correct balance between release velocity and system stability, which is the fundamental purpose of error budgets. Error budgets exist to encourage a healthy level of risk-taking up to the point where user experience is not impacted.

From the Site Reliability Engineering Book, SLO chapter:

“Error budgets provide a mechanism for balancing innovation and reliability by allowing measured risk-taking while ensuring user expectations are met.”

The SRE Workbook adds:

“Teams should aim to use their full error budget. Not using it implies missed opportunities to deliver features or improvements.”

This means that strategically burning the error budget to zero ensures:

Teams are shipping value at maximum safe velocity

Reliability goals are still respected

Risk is managed and intentional

Why other options are incorrect:

B Capacity measurement is unrelated to error budget consumption.

C Error budgets should not be continually revised unless business needs change.

D Conversations with partners may occur, but this is not the primary benefit.

Thus, the correct answer is A.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

SRE emphasizes organizational alignment and collaboration, warning against siloed thinking. The SRE Book highlights: “Local optimizations at the expense of the broader system lead to inefficiency, misalignment, and reduced reliability.” When individuals or teams focus only on their own “parts” instead of shared goals (“the whole”), it results in decreased cross-team communication, isolation, operational friction, and reduced efficiency.

Option B captures this SRE-documented outcome: increased introversion (siloing) and decreased efficiency.

Option A and D describe positive outcomes that contradict SRE principles of collaboration.

Option C implies healthy sharing, which does not result from silo-first behavior.

Thus, B is correct.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Google defines SRE as “what happens when you ask a software engineer to design an operations function.” (SRE Book – Introduction). The core engineering approach in SRE focuses on:

Eliminating toil

Building scalable systems

Applying software engineering to operational challenges

Learning from previous solutions and patterns

The SRE Book emphasizes: “SREs focus on designing and engineering solutions that reduce manual operations and scale service delivery.” (Chapter: Eliminating Toil). This aligns directly with Option B: designing a solution to eliminate toil and scale service delivery, informed by prior successful engineering patterns.

Option A focuses only on automating a single tuning activity—not holistic engineering.

Option C describes deployment, not engineering approach to operations.

Option D is about incident response, not engineering strategy.

Thus, B is the best representation of SRE’s engineering approach.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

High turnover in IT operations roles is often driven by a combination of factors, not just one. The Google SRE Book, Chapter “Eliminating Toil,” outlines that excessive toil, unpredictable work, and overload contribute to burnout and churn:

“Excessive operational workload and interrupt-driven work lead to burnout and high attrition among engineering and operational staff.”

The SRE Workbook adds:

“Teams overwhelmed with toil struggle to innovate, automate, or develop new skills, creating frustration and increasing turnover.”

Each option listed represents a recognized driver of burnout in SRE and operations environments:

Overload and disruptive work patterns are known contributors to burnout.

Lack of time for skills development demotivates engineers and prevents career growth.

Backlog-driven cultures force teams into reactive rather than proactive work.

The combination of these factors matches common causes of attrition in operations teams. Therefore, all of the above is the correct answer.