SRE : Site Reliability Engineering Course Content
Prerequisite: Knowledge on Docker and Kubernetes
1. Introduction to SRE
l Defining Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) in detail.
l Principles of SRE: reliability, scalability, performance, and fault tolerance.
l Exploring the role of an SRE within an organization.
l SRE vs DevOps: a comparative study.
l Creating a culture of collaboration between development and operations teams.
2. Fundamentals of Reliability Engineering
l Deep dive into reliability concepts: uptime, downtime, MTTF (Mean Time To Failure),
MTTR (Mean Time To Recover), etc.
l Understanding Service Level Objectives (SLOs), Indicators (SLIs), and Agreements
(SLAs).
l Explaining error budgets and their significance in SRE.
3. Operations and Infrastructure
l Design principles for highly available systems: redundancy, fault isolation, graceful
degradation, etc.
l Infrastructure as Code (IaC): its importance and implementation.
l Scalability: horizontal vs. vertical scaling, auto-scaling, and elasticity.
4. Incident Management and Response
l Implementing incident response frameworks: identification, triage, resolution, and
post-mortems.
l Setting up effective monitoring and alerting systems.
l Building runbooks and incident documentation.
5. Service Capacity Planning
l Techniques for capacity planning: forecasting, load testing, and performance
modeling.
l Resource allocation strategies and their impact on reliability.
l Handling unexpected traffic spikes and load balancing strategies.
6. Tooling and Technologies
l Configuration management tools (e.g., Ansible, Puppet, Chef).
l Monitoring and alerting tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Nagios).
l Orchestration and automation tools (e.g., Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform).
[Link] Engineering and Deployment Strategies
l CI/CD pipelines: tools, best practices, and their integration into SRE.
l Deployment strategies: canary deployments, blue-green deployments, and A/B
testing.
l Strategies to minimize risk during deployments.
7. Reliability Testing
l Introduction to Chaos Engineering : Chaos engineering in SRE
l Principle of Chaos Engineering
l Chaos Engineering tools(e.g., Litmus)
l Chaos experiment design
l Chaos Experiment Execution (Random pod deletion experiment)
8. Reliability in Cloud Environments
l Cloud-native technologies
l Best practices for reliability in cloud setups
9. Case Studies and Real-world Examples
l Analyzing scenarios from leading tech companies
l Learning from successful and challenging SRE Implementation.
What is SRE?
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is a methodology that combines software
engineering practices with principles of operations to create scalable and reliable
systems. It's about maintaining the reliability and performance of large-scale
systems while enabling frequent updates and changes.
Why Organizations Need SRE:
l Reliability: In today's digital world, users expect services to be available 24/7
without disruptions. SRE ensures systems are reliable, minimizing downtime and
ensuring a good user experience.
l Scalability: As companies grow, their systems need to handle more users and data.
SRE helps design and maintain systems that can grow and handle increased
loads without breaking.
l Faster Innovation: SRE practices allow for continuous updates and improvements
to systems without sacrificing reliability. It enables innovation and rapid
development while keeping services stable.
l Cost Efficiency: By preventing downtime and optimizing systems, SRE can save
organizations money in the long run by reducing expensive outages or hardware
costs.
Learning about Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) can be beneficial for individuals in
various ways:
l Career Opportunities: SRE skills are in high demand across industries. Learning
SRE principles, tools, and practices can open up lucrative career opportunities in
tech companies and organizations focused on reliability and scalability.
l Holistic Understanding: SRE covers a wide range of topics, from software
development to system reliability. Learning SRE provides a comprehensive
understanding of how to design, build, and maintain reliable and scalable
systems.
l Enhanced Problem-Solving Skills: SRE involves dealing with complex systems and
solving challenging problems related to reliability, performance, and scalability.
Individuals can develop strong problem-solving skills that are valuable across various
domains.
l Improved Collaboration: SRE emphasizes collaboration between development and
operations teams. Learning SRE fosters an understanding of cross-functional
collaboration, which is increasingly important in modern workplaces.
l Adaptability and Innovation: SRE encourages continuous improvement and
innovation while maintaining reliability. Individuals learn to implement new
technologies and practices without compromising system stability.
l Resilience and Mitigating Risk: SRE principles focus on resilience and risk
mitigation. Individuals equipped with SRE knowledge can anticipate potential
failures and design systems to withstand them
l Personal Development: Learning SRE isn't just about technical skills. It can also
foster soft skills such as communication, adaptability, and a proactive approach
to problem-
solving.
Here's a list of companies implementing SRE
l Google
l Netflix
l Amazon
l Facebook
l Microsoft
l Hotstar
l Twitter
l LinkedIn
l eBay
l PayPal
l Airbnb
l Dropbox
l Slack
l Reddit
l Pinterest
l GitLab
l Hulu
l Twitch
l Zillow
l Docker
l NVIDIA
l Wayfair
l DoorDash
l Robinhood
l Evernote
l Box
Learning Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) can open various career opportunities across
the tech industry:
l Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)
l DevOps Engineer
l Cloud Engineer/Architect
l Software Engineer with a Focus on Reliability
l Infrastructure Engineer
l Data Engineer
l Security Engineer
l Quality Assurance (QA) Engineer
l Technical Leadership and Management Roles
