Glossary · S
Service Level Objective (SLO)
Service Level Objective
A measurable target for service reliability
What it means
A service level objective sets a target for a service indicator over a defined period, such as the proportion of successful requests. It is an operational objective and may support an SLA. An error budget is the amount of unreliability allowed by that SLO, not the difference between an SLO and an SLA.
What it means for a business
A team can define an SLO for successful requests and track how much of the allowed failure budget has been used. That evidence can inform decisions about reliability work and releases. Targets and measurement windows should reflect the service’s actual use.