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SRE-BASICS5 MIN READ

Respond to Fast and Slow Burn

Choose response urgency from error-budget burn rate and time window.

SLO alert The checkout API is failing 1.2% of valid requests. The question is not just 'how many errors?' but 'how fast are we spending trust?' Burn rate is budget speed Fast burn pages; slow burn creates planned reliability work. Fewer noisy pages, fewer missed slow failures Page when the budget is burning fast enough to threaten the SLO soon. Fast window The 5-minute burn rate predicts budget exhaustion in four hours. What response level fits? Slow window The 30-day window is trending poorly, but the 5-minute and 1-hour burns are normal. What should happen? Fresh case A low-traffic admin…

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