Smart Alerts for Service Level Objectives

You can create Smart Alerts for Service Level Objectives (SLO) to send an alert when various thesholds are exceeded, including SLO status, percentage of error budget used, or error budget burn rate. You can further configure the alert by specifying one or more alert channels, attaching custom payloads, or configuring time thresholds.

Permissions

No permission is required to create Smart Alerts for SLOs. However, you are limited by the permissions in place for any entities (applications or websites) associated with your SLO. If you have permission to view an application or website, you can create Smart Alerts for them.

Creating Smart Alerts for SLOs

To create a Smart Alert for SLOs, complete the following steps:

  1. From the navigation menu in the Instana UI, select Service Levels. The Service Levels page shows an overview of all SLOs including their status in alphanumeric order.

  2. Click + ADD.

  3. Click Add Smart Alert. You can also create a Smart Alert from a specific SLO's dashboard. To do that, go to the dashboard of the SLO and click Add Smart Alert.

  4. Smart Alert configuration modal is displayed.

  5. Select the type of the SLO to create a Smart Alert for the selected SLO.

  6. Select one or multiple SLOs from the list to create a Smart Alert for the selected SLOs.

  7. Select the type of blueprint to be alerted on.

    • Error budget: An alert is sent when the specified percentage of the error budget is used.

    • Status: An alert is sent when the SLO status is less than the specified threshold.

    • Burn rate: An alert is triggered based on the SLO (Service Level Objective) burn rate and the specified threshold. The burn rate is monitored by using two distinct alert windows, each examining data over different time periods.

      • Long alert window This window looks back over an extended period to evaluate whether the burn rate exceeded the threshold. It helps identify issues that develop gradually and might pose future problems if not addressed.
      • Short alert window This window examines a shorter time frame to detect if the burn rate surpasses the threshold rapidly. It is useful for detecting sudden spikes in errors or downtime that might be due to immediate and critical issues.

      Alert window values must be less than or equal to the selected SLO’s time window. Also, the short alert window must always be shorter than the long alert window.

  8. Select whether to configure the error budget, SLO status, or burn rate. For the burn rate option, set the threshold value and define the long and short alert windows. For error budget and SLO status, only the threshold percentage needs to be set.

  9. Set the time threshold condition that is to be met.

  10. Click Select Alert Channels.

  1. The list of available alert channels is displayed.

  1. Select one or more Alert Channels. If no channels appear, create one by clicking Create Alert Channel.

  2. Click Add.

  3. Set the Alert Properties.

  • Title: Title for the Smart Alert. Title is used to identify the Smart Alert.
  • Alert Level: Defines the style of the alert. You can set the alert to Critical or Warning.
  • Triggers Incident: Choose whether the Smart Alert triggers an incident or not.
  • Description: Give the Smart Alert a description to provide more context.

Incident triggering is only supported for application entities.

  1. Optional: Add Custom Payload to the Smart Alert. To add Custom Payload, click Add Row and specify the key-value pairs for each added row.

  1. Click Create.