SLO & Reliability
Practical
By Samson Tanimawo, PhD
Published Feb 11, 2026
4 min read
Burn Rate Formula
Burn rate = errors / budget × time-window.
Calculate
Per service: actual error rate / acceptable error rate.
Burn rate >1 = exhausting.
Alert
Burn rate >14x for 1h: page.
Catches sustained drift fast.
Multi-window
Different windows; different thresholds.
Catches both spikes and drift.