Google: Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Handbook

The Google SRE Handbook is the definitive guide to how Google designs, builds, and operates reliable, large-scale systems. Written by Google’s own Site Reliability Engineers, the book blends principles, practices, and real-world case studies that explain how to balance innovation with reliability.

Key topics include service level objectives (SLOs), eliminating operational toil, monitoring distributed systems, effective incident response, and scaling teams. Designed as both a reference manual and a practical playbook, the handbook is widely regarded as the foundation of modern reliability engineering.

Editors:
• Betsy Beyer
• Chris Jones
• Jennifer Petoff
• Niall Richard Murphy

Contributors (selected):
• Vivek Rau
• Thomas Limoncelli
• Ben Treynor Sloss (credited as the originator of SRE at Google)
• Many Google engineers from the original SRE team

Google SRE Handbook – Table of Contents

Part I: Introduction
• Introduction to Site Reliability Engineering
• The Production Environment at Google
• Embracing Risk

Part II: Principles
• Service Level Objectives (SLOs)
• Eliminating Toil
• Monitoring Distributed Systems
• Release Engineering
• Simplicity

Part III: Practices
• Practical Alerting
• Being On-Call
• Effective Troubleshooting
• Emergency Response
• Capacity Planning
• Change Management

Part IV: Management
• Team Lifecycles
• Dealing with Interrupts
• Incentives and Motivation
• Communication and Collaboration
Part V: The Big Picture
• Reliability and the Bigger Product Picture
• Organizational Impact of SRE
• SRE Engagement Models
• Conclusion

Appendices
• Glossary of Terms
• References and Further Reading