DevOps-SRE PeopleCert Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Foundation v1.2 Free Practice Exam Questions (2025 Updated)

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The SRE Workbook describes an Error Budget Policy as a formal decision-making framework that defines what actions to take when a service consumes its error budget. Specifically, Google writes: “An error budget policy establishes when and how teams must intervene, whether to pause releases, prioritize reliability work, or adjust processes.” (SRE Workbook – Error Budget Policies). The purpose is to create predictable responses to reliability degradation—not simply alerting, innovation boosting, or bug prevention.

Option C best matches the definition: deciding when and how to intervene based on error budget burn.

Option A is only an alerting rule, not a policy.

Option B is an outcome of a healthy budget, not the policy’s purpose.

Option D is too narrow and is not how error budgets are framed.

Thus, C is correct.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

All the listed reasons correctly describe why observability becomes essential in modern, user-focused, dynamically scaling architectures.

The SRE Workbook and Google Observability guidance both emphasize that traditional monitoring is insufficient in environments where:

Services are distributed

Traffic is unpredictable

Customer experience is a priority

Cloud-native, containerized, or microservice architectures are used

Key excerpts:

From Google’s Observability guidance:

“Monitoring relies on known failure modes; observability enables teams to explore unknown-unknowns and understand complex, dynamic systems.”

From the SRE Workbook:

“As systems scale and architectures shift toward microservices or containers, component-level monitoring provides an incomplete picture. Observability enables teams to understand user impact and system behavior holistically.”

Thus:

A Observability is critical for containerized and dynamic environments.

B Component monitoring alone cannot show customer experience or end-to-end reliability.

C Observability helps teams diagnose issues that could not be predicted in advance ("unknown unknowns").

All statements are correct, making D the correct answer.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Automation is the primary method of reducing toil in SRE. The Google Site Reliability Engineering Book, Chapter “Eliminating Toil,” states:

“Automation is the most effective tool for reducing toil. Any recurring, manual, automatable task should be automated to prevent it from consuming engineering time.”

Automated release systems directly eliminate toil by:

Removing manual deployment steps

Removing repeated, error-prone human processes

Increasing reliability and consistency

Freeing engineers for high-value project work

The SRE Workbook reinforces this:

“CI/CD pipelines and release automation remove significant operational toil by replacing manual processes with repeatable, reliable automation.”

Why the other answers are incorrect:

B AI is not required for toil reduction.

C Meeting travel is not an SRE toil concern.

D Incorrect; automation dramatically reduces long-term toil, even though initial setup requires effort.

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:

Fixed error budgets are preferred in SRE because they encourage smaller, safer, and more predictable releases, which inherently reduces risk. A fixed budget forces the team to consistently evaluate how much reliability they can afford to trade for delivery speed each month or quarter.

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

“Error budgets allow teams to make controlled decisions about the risk they take on. A fixed budget naturally encourages teams to release in smaller batches, which reduces the overall risk and impact of a failure.”

Similarly, the SRE Workbook states:

“When teams work within a fixed error budget, they tend to push changes in smaller increments to avoid burning the budget too quickly.”

Why the other options are incorrect:

A Fixed budgets reduce toil by reducing firefighting, not increase it.

C Fixed budgets can be exceeded; this is not a reason they are beneficial.

D Error budgets do not predict outages; they measure tolerated unreliability.

Thus, the correct and SRE-supported answer is B.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Toil-reduction engineering focuses on making the service itself easier to operate. The most direct way to achieve this is through internal automation — automation built into the service that eliminates repetitive, manual operational tasks.

The Site Reliability Engineering Book, Chapter “Eliminating Toil,” states:

“Automation that replaces manual, repetitive operational tasks is the primary mechanism for reducing toil. The most effective form of toil reduction is automation that is integrated directly into the service itself.”

The SRE Workbook reinforces:

“Internal automation contributes directly to service reliability and reduces the operational burden by ensuring that manual tasks are permanently removed.”

Why the other options are not the best answer:

A Continuous delivery pipelines reduce release friction but do not directly remove service-operational toil.

B External scripts and tools help but are less effective and harder to maintain than internal automation.

C Scalable infrastructure reduces linear-scaling toil but does not address broader operational burdens.

Thus, the correct answer is D.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Known workarounds represent toil that has no enduring value, one of the key characteristics of toil defined by the SRE framework.

From the Site Reliability Engineering Book, Chapter “Eliminating Toil”:

“Toil is work that is manual, repetitive, automatable, tactical, has no enduring value, and scales linearly with service size.”

Known workarounds fit this definition because:

They solve the same recurring problems repeatedly

They do not permanently fix the underlying issue

They consume engineer time without contributing long-term improvements

These activities lack enduring value and should be eliminated through automation or engineering fixes.

Why the other options are incorrect:

A. Linear scaling — Many forms of toil scale linearly, but this does not specifically describe workarounds.

B. Tactical — Tactical means short-term, but not all tactical work is a workaround.

C. Automatable — While some workarounds can be automated, not all are.

D. No enduring value — This is the defining trait of workaround-type toil.

Therefore, option D is correct.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The term observability comes directly from control theory and refers to the ability to infer the internal state of a system from its external outputs. Modern SRE and observability practices adopt this definition.

Google’s Site Reliability Engineering guidance (SRE Book Addendum on Observability) states:

“Observability is a property of a system that allows operators to understand its internal state by examining its outputs such as logs, metrics, and traces.”

This aligns exactly with Option C, the formal definition.

Why the other options are incorrect:

A Monitoring is part of observability, but observability is much broader.

B Health checks are simply one signal; they do not represent observability.

D Data collection is a mechanism, not the definition of observability itself.

Thus, C is the correct and academically accurate definition.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

SRE is built on transparency and broad information sharing. The SRE Book states: “High-quality operations require that information flows freely between product development, SRE, and associated teams.” (SRE Book – Chapter: Communication and Collaboration). Effective incident management also depends on complete data availability: “Centralized, shared information reduces cognitive load and improves incident resolution.” (SRE Workbook – Incident Management).

Option B aligns perfectly with SRE principles: data must flow freely, ensuring everyone has access to metrics, logs, architecture details, incident context, and SLOs.

Options A, C, and D promote restricted or fragmented data practices, which are directly contrary to SRE design. SRE teams avoid information silos.

Thus, B is correct.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

SRE and DevOps share a common view of continuous monitoring—a holistic approach that enables rapid detection, diagnosis, and response across all parts of the system. The SRE Book states: “Monitoring must enable fast detection of anomalies, quick diagnosis, and effective incident response.” Continuous monitoring includes application metrics, infrastructure signals, logs, traces, service health, and user-experience telemetry.

Option B captures this accurately: a combination of tools and processes enabling rapid incident detection and response, especially for cloud services.

Option A is partially correct but too narrow (only end-user transactions).

Option C is generic and does not emphasize continuous or rapid detection.

Option D describes infrastructure monitoring only—not full DevOps/SRE continuous monitoring.

Thus, B is the correct answer.

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:

The SRE Book defines reliability as: “the probability that a system will perform its intended function correctly for a specified period of time.” (SRE Book – Introduction). Reliability focuses on correctness and consistent performance, not simply uptime. Availability (option A) refers to system uptime or accessibility. Durability (option C) refers to long-term data persistence. Throughput (option D) measures volume of work processed over time.

Because the definition explicitly mentions probability of meeting performance standards and correct output over time, it directly matches the SRE definition of reliability.

Thus, B is correct.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Error budgets are a fundamental SRE mechanism for balancing reliability and innovation. The SRE book states: “The error budget directly governs the rate of change: as long as the service stays within budget, development velocity can remain high.” (SRE Book – Chapter: Service Level Objectives). This means teams can push changes aggressively as long as the allowed amount of unreliability has not been consumed.

The error budget acts as a safety threshold. When reliability dips and the error budget is consumed, SRE enforces a change freeze to restore stability. Google explains: “If the error budget is spent, releases are halted and efforts focus on improving reliability.” Feature velocity is not arbitrarily slowed—it is governed solely by the remaining error budget.

Option A best expresses this: when the error budget is high, teams can safely accelerate feature delivery.

Option D incorrectly suggests rushing, which contradicts controlled release practices.

Option B misinterprets error budgets as a percentage-based throttling system.

Option C incorrectly implies that innovation stops entirely only when empty.

Thus, A is the correct interpretation according to official SRE principles.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

In a safety culture, SRE emphasizes psychological safety so engineers can work effectively in production without fear of blame. However, safety never removes accountability. Engineers must take responsibility for their actions, decisions, and assumptions, particularly during incidents.

The Site Reliability Engineering Book, Chapter “Postmortem Culture,” states:

“Blamelessness does not eliminate accountability. Individuals must still explain the context, assumptions, and reasoning behind their decisions so that the organization can learn.”

Google stresses that:

Engineers must feel safe to act and report issues

Engineers must remain responsible and accountable

Accountability enables learning, not punishment

Why other options are incorrect:

A Sharing incidents on social media violates confidentiality

C Blameless postmortems are required, not skipped

D Avoiding on-call is contrary to SRE responsibilities

Thus, B is correct.

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:

Service Level Indicators (SLIs) provide the quantitative measurements needed to determine how much of the Service Level Objective (SLO) has been consumed. Since the error budget is defined as the allowable amount of unreliability, SLI data is the source of truth for calculating how much of that budget remains.

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

“SLIs provide the measurements used to determine compliance with SLOs. Error budgets are computed directly from the SLI measurements over the defined time window.”

The SRE Workbook further explains:

“Error budgets quantify the inverse of SLO performance. SLIs provide the raw data that allow teams to calculate how much of the budget has been consumed and how much remains.”

Thus, SLI data is the Only mechanism that determines remaining error budget.

Therefore, the statement is True.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

A Production Readiness Review (PRR) is a core SRE practice ensuring that a service meets specific reliability, operational, monitoring, and alerting standards before SRE assumes responsibility. The Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Workbook states: “PRRs validate that a service is prepared for production and ready for SRE engagement, ensuring operational readiness, monitoring completeness, on-call preparation, and automation maturity.” The goal is not merely organizational handover but ensuring the service is fully prepared for reliable operation in production.

Option A fits this definition exactly: ensuring the service is ready for SRE support.

Option B focuses on development/testing readiness, not production readiness.

Option C references standards/frameworks not part of PRR’s purpose.

Option D is only a partial implication—transition of accountability happens after PRR readiness, not the main purpose of PRR.

Thus, A is the correct SRE-aligned answer.

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:

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.