DevOps-SRE Exam Dumps - PeopleCert DevOps Questions and Answers

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:

A Service Level Indicator (SLI) is a measurement of some aspect of reliability (e.g., latency, availability, quality). One of its defining characteristics is that it must be measured over a specific time window. Without a time horizon, the SLI has no actionable meaning.

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

“An SLI is a quantitative measure of some aspect of the level of service that is provided. SLIs are evaluated over a specific period of time in order to understand reliability as experienced by the user.”

The SRE Workbook further states:

“Every SLI must define a measurement window. Without a time horizon, the indicator cannot be used to calculate SLO compliance.”

Why the other options are incorrect:

A SLIs do not need to appear in an SLA; SLAs are external contracts, SLOs/SLIs are internal engineering tools.

B SLIs may include client-side, server-side, or network metrics depending on what reflects user experience.

D SLI agreement is not defined by SRE vs. Agile teams; it is defined by business and user need.

Thus, the correct answer is C.

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:

In the Full SRE model, reliability becomes a first-class citizen because SREs own the complete operational responsibility for the service and apply SRE principles end-to-end. The Google SRE Book describes several adoption models (Consulting, Embedded, and Full), and only the Full SRE model has SREs fully accountable for reliability outcomes.

From the Site Reliability Engineering Book, Chapter “SRE Engagement Models”:

“In the Full SRE model, the SRE team is responsible for end-to-end reliability. Reliability becomes a first-class objective, supported through SLOs, error budgets, and systematic reduction of toil.”

The Full model includes:

Full ownership of reliability

Enforcement of SLOs

Error budget policies

Engineering-driven improvement

Other models:

Consulting → SRE gives guidance but doesn’t own reliability

Embedded → temporary embedding to train teams, not full ownership

Platform → focuses on shared tooling, not service ownership

Thus, D. Full is correct.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The goal of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is to create ultra-scalable and highly reliable distributed software systems. This principle is clearly articulated in the foundational text of SRE, the Google Site Reliability Engineering book.

From Chapter 1: Introduction of the Site Reliability Engineering book:

"SRE is what happens when you ask a software engineer to design an operations team. Our approach to service management is rooted in our belief that engineering work to create scalable and highly reliable systems is critical to the success of modern software."

— Site Reliability Engineering Book, Chapter 1

This statement establishes that building and maintaining scalable, reliable systems is the core mission of SRE. While concepts like reducing toil (option A), implementing SLOs (option B), and aligning with DevOps (option C) are vital components of the SRE practice, they support the overarching goal — which is option D.

Therefore, the correct answer is D: To create ultra-scalable and highly reliable distributed software systems.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Defense-in-Depth (DiD) is a layered security strategy referenced in SRE’s discussions of secure infrastructure and resilience. The perimeter layer is responsible for controlling and monitoring traffic flowing into and out of the network from external sources, such as the public Internet. This includes firewalls, intrusion detection systems, load balancers, and boundary network controls.

While SRE focuses primarily on reliability, the SRE Book stresses the importance of resilient system boundaries: “Perimeter protections are critical where external traffic enters the system.” (SRE Book – Security and Infrastructure considerations).

Option C correctly identifies the Perimeter Layer as the network boundary where data flows in/out from other networks—including the Internet.

Option A (Host layer) secures individual machines.

Option B (Physical layer) refers to hardware, power, racks, etc.

Option D (Data layer) protects stored data, not ingress/egress traffic.

Thus, C is correct.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Burning the error budget to zero — strategically, not accidentally — helps ensure the correct balance between release velocity and system stability, which is the fundamental purpose of error budgets. Error budgets exist to encourage a healthy level of risk-taking up to the point where user experience is not impacted.

From the Site Reliability Engineering Book, SLO chapter:

“Error budgets provide a mechanism for balancing innovation and reliability by allowing measured risk-taking while ensuring user expectations are met.”

The SRE Workbook adds:

“Teams should aim to use their full error budget. Not using it implies missed opportunities to deliver features or improvements.”

This means that strategically burning the error budget to zero ensures:

Teams are shipping value at maximum safe velocity

Reliability goals are still respected

Risk is managed and intentional

Why other options are incorrect:

B Capacity measurement is unrelated to error budget consumption.

C Error budgets should not be continually revised unless business needs change.

D Conversations with partners may occur, but this is not the primary benefit.

Thus, the correct answer is A.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Swarming is described in modern SRE incident management as a collaborative, multi-expert response model. Instead of linear escalation, SRE uses: “a rapid collaboration of the right experts at the same time to resolve incidents quickly.” (SRE Workbook – Effective Incident Response). Swarming pulls specialists together immediately, allowing them to jointly triage and work on issues, improving time-to-resolution and reducing handoff delays.

Option D captures this: multiple specialist teams coming together simultaneously to determine ownership and action.

Option A describes traditional tiered escalation, which SRE avoids.

Option B represents a reactive queue model, not swarming.

Option C focuses on monitoring progress, not active collaborative response.

Thus, D is correct.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

SRE and DevOps release engineering define a canary release as rolling out new features to a small subset of users to validate reliability and performance before full release. The SRE Book states: “Canarying is the practice of releasing changes to a small percentage of users or servers first to detect issues before global rollout.” This minimizes risk by catching regressions early without impacting the entire user base.

Option B fits this definition exactly.

Option A (rolling wave) is a deployment pattern but not canarying.

Option C resembles phased rollout but not specifically canary release.

Option D describes testing, not production canary deployment.

Thus, B is correct.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The SRE Book provides a precise definition: “SLIs are the carefully defined quantitative measures of some aspect of the level of service provided. SLOs are the target values or ranges for these indicators.” (SRE Book – Chapter: Service Level Objectives). This establishes a clear hierarchical relationship: SLIs are the measurements, while SLOs define the acceptable target levels for those measurements.

Therefore, option A is correct: SLIs measure things like latency, availability, throughput, and error rate.

SLOs then define the goal such as “99.9% availability over 30 days.”

Option B reverses the relationship.

Option C incorrectly says SLOs measure SLIs, which is backwards.

Option D confuses metrics and targets.

Thus, A is the only choice that aligns with Google’s official SRE definitions.