Free PeopleCert DevOps-SRE Practice Exam with Questions & Answers

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:

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:

Kubernetes is described in SRE-aligned literature as an open-source container orchestration platform that automates deployment, scaling, failover, and lifecycle management of containerized applications. The Site Reliability Workbook references Kubernetes as: “a container management system that automatically handles service discovery, scaling, rollout management, and self-healing.” (SRE Workbook – Production Environment chapters). Kubernetes does not replace an OS, nor is it a CI/CD platform; it sits on top of an OS and orchestrates containers across clusters.

Option C is the most accurate: it captures container management, cloud deployment context, automated scaling, and failover—key capabilities of Kubernetes.

Options A and B incorrectly describe CI/CD platforms.

Option D incorrectly labels Kubernetes as an “operating system.”

Thus, C is correct.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Error budgets represent the allowable amount of unreliability in a system. Google defines the purpose of error budgets as: “balancing the pace of innovation with the need for reliability.” (SRE Book – Service Level Objectives). When the error budget is healthy, product teams can release features quickly; when it is exhausted, reliability work takes priority. This balance prevents over-investment in reliability and enables safe innovation.

Option B—innovation and reliability—is the exact phrasing used in Google’s SRE literature.

Options A, C, and D do not reflect the core purpose of error budgets.

Thus, B is the correct answer.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

SRE emphasizes organizational alignment and collaboration, warning against siloed thinking. The SRE Book highlights: “Local optimizations at the expense of the broader system lead to inefficiency, misalignment, and reduced reliability.” When individuals or teams focus only on their own “parts” instead of shared goals (“the whole”), it results in decreased cross-team communication, isolation, operational friction, and reduced efficiency.

Option B captures this SRE-documented outcome: increased introversion (siloing) and decreased efficiency.

Option A and D describe positive outcomes that contradict SRE principles of collaboration.

Option C implies healthy sharing, which does not result from silo-first behavior.

Thus, B is correct.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a critical component of organizational resilience. While not unique to SRE, SRE strongly intersects with continuity planning because reliable systems must continue functioning during disruptions. According to Google’s SRE principles, reliability extends beyond typical outages and includes “ensuring services continue to operate even under exceptional conditions.” (SRE Book – Chapter: Addressing Risks). A business continuity plan specifically outlines how essential operations are maintained during major disruptions such as natural disasters, data center outages, or large-scale system failures.

Option A—“The way the organization maintains operations during a disaster”—matches the formal definition of BCP.

Option B refers to disaster recovery (DR), which is separate; DR focuses on restoring systems, not maintaining ongoing operations.

Option C refers to configuration management activities, not continuity.

Option D refers to risk management, which informs BCP but does not define it.

Therefore, A is the correct answer because it directly reflects the purpose of continuity planning as supported by reliability-focused guidance.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Before defining any technical details of an SLO, the SRE guidance is clear: the conversation must start from the customer’s point of view. SLOs exist to represent what reliability level users genuinely require—not internal assumptions or engineering preferences.

The SRE Workbook, Chapter “Implementing SLOs,” states:

“The process must begin by understanding what your users need from the service and what good performance actually means from the user’s perspective.”

Likewise, in the Site Reliability Engineering Book:

“SLOs capture the reliability target that makes sense for the users and the product, which is why defining them must begin with understanding the user experience.”

This means that SLO development begins with analyzing:

What users value

What reliability thresholds they notice

What failures matter to them most

Only after this understanding is established should teams discuss metrics, thresholds, SLIs, and error budgets.

Why the other options are incorrect:

A. Identify toil — Relevant to operations, not SLO creation.

B. Evaluate automation — Important for reducing toil, unrelated to initial SLO definition.

D. Assess resources — Planning happens after SLO definition, not before.

Thus, the correct answer is C.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The Westrum Organizational Culture Model categorizes organizations based on how effectively they allow information to flow, particularly in high-risk and high-performance environments. This model is widely referenced in SRE and DevOps practices and is cited by Google in their SRE culture guidance.

The Westrum model identifies three culture types:

Pathological (power-oriented)

Bureaucratic (rule-oriented)

Generative (performance-oriented)

From the SRE Workbook and Google’s DevOps Research (DORA):

“The Westrum model is a taxonomy of organizational cultures based on how information flows. Generative cultures—with high cooperation and open information flow—correlate with higher reliability and better outcomes.”

Why the other options are incorrect:

A Deployment frequency is a DORA metric, not Westrum’s focus.

C Resource flow is unrelated to Westrum.

D While communication affects design, Westrum specifically studies information flow as a cultural health indicator, not structural design.

Thus, the correct answer is B.

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:

Chaos engineering is an SRE-aligned practice where systems are intentionally subjected to controlled failure scenarios so teams can observe how the system responds. This practice supports anti-fragility, meaning the system becomes stronger through exposure to failure.

The SRE Workbook, Chapter “Handling Overload” and Chaos Engineering sections, explains:

“Injecting failure in a controlled environment exposes the hidden dependencies, weaknesses, and systemic risks that only appear under stress.”

The Site Reliability Engineering Book reinforces this concept:

“By understanding how systems behave during partial failures, teams can make targeted improvements that reduce recovery time during real incidents.”

Improving Mean Time to Recover (MTTR) happens because:

Weak points and bottlenecks are identified early

Engineers gain familiarity with failure modes

Systems are hardened ahead of actual outages

Dependencies that cause cascading failures are revealed

Why other options are incorrect:

B Monitoring optimization is helpful but not the core mechanism of chaos engineering.

C Chaos engineering does not create auto-recovery automation; it reveals where it is required.

D Caching is an architectural resilience strategy, not an outcome of chaos engineering itself.

Thus, A is the correct answer.