The document discusses Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices at New Relic. It summarizes that New Relic has transitioned from a monolithic architecture run by siloed teams to over 200 microservices run by many engineering teams with embedded SREs. SREs aim to continuously improve reliability by reducing toil, encouraging best practices, automating operations, and supporting engineering teams. SREs focus on stability, reliability engineering, and reducing operations toil. The document provides a template for other companies to establish SRE roles, focus areas, and details in the SRE book.

1. ©2008–18 New Relic, Inc. All rights reserved
Tori Wieldt
Sr. Solutions Manager
New Relic
SRE-iously! Reliability!
@ToriWieldt

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Safe Harbor
This presentation and the information herein (including any information that may be incorporated by reference) is provided for
informational purposes only and should not be construed as an offer, commitment, promise or obligation on behalf of New Relic, Inc.
(“New Relic”) to sell securities or deliver any product, material, code, functionality, or other feature. Any information provided hereby is
proprietary to New Relic and may not be replicated or disclosed without New Relic’s express written permission.
Such information may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Any statement that is not a
historical fact or refers to expectations, projections, future plans, objectives, estimates, goals, or other characterizations of future events is
a forward-looking statement. These forward-looking statements can often be identified as such because the context of the statement will
include words such as “believes,” “anticipates,” “expects” or words of similar import.
Actual results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, and
are subject to change at any time without notice. Existing and prospective investors, customers and other third parties transacting business
with New Relic are cautioned not to place undue reliance on this forward-looking information. The achievement or success of the matters
covered by such forward-looking statements are based on New Relic’s current assumptions, expectations, and beliefs and are subject to
substantial risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and changes in circumstances that may cause the actual results, performance, or
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could affect such forward-looking statements is included in the filings New Relic makes with the SEC from time to time. Copies of these
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New Relic assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law. New Relic
makes no warranties, expressed or implied, in this presentation or otherwise, with respect to the information provided.

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We Speak from Experience
To
200+
Microservices
50+ Engineering
Teams with
embedded SREs
20-70 Deploys
a Day
Ruby Monolith
Siloed teams
Infrequent
Releases
From

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We All Want Speed AND 99.999999999% Uptime
But what if
you’re not
Google?

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How It Was
On Premises
Relational
Database
Customers
NoSQL
Data Store
Micro Services
API

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We Asked Our Stakeholders
Why do we have
SREs at New Relic?
What’s the vision
for our SRE team?
How can SREs most
effectively contribute to
the future of our platform?
@ToriWieldt

7. ©2008–18 New Relic, Inc. All rights reserved 7
Our Goal
Continuously improve
the reliability of systems
in the New Relic platform
Internal
Customers
External
Customers

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How SREs Build Reliability
Champion reliability best practices.
Guide designs and processes with an eye toward resilience and low toil.
Reduce technical complexity and sprawl.
Drive the usage of tooling and common components.
Implement software and tooling to improve resilience and automate operations.
@ToriWieldt

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Two Roles
“Pure” SRE
Build and support our
core internal platform:
Container Fabric
Networking Systems
Embedded SRE
Partner with Eng Teams
Domain Experts in:
Reliability
Tooling
Scaling

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Three Spheres
Reliability EngineeringStability
Operations Improvement Shift Left

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Toil
Repetitive work that scales linearly.
● Fix team problems manually.
● Track down hardware defects on servers.
● Provision _______________.
● Run Ansible playbooks.

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Encourage
Best Practices
Stay Current
• Audit runbooks
• Hold “game days”
• Meet with product architects
• Create team risk matrices
@ToriWieldt

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Reduce Sprawl Improve Monitoring
• Migrate teams to
our code pipeline
• Build tools
• Clean up alerts
• Build an integration

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Automate Support the Community
• Automate a runbook
• Influence design
• Have a mentor/mentee
• Share a solution

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Keys to SRE Success
Reliability is a feature Query your stakeholders
Reliability depends on
shared understanding
Develop clear, specific guidelines
SRE is a challenging, cross-
disciplinary practice
Build a strong SRE community

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A Template for Success
Determine
Your Goal
1
Example:
Continuously improve
the reliability of the
systems of our
company’s platform.
2
Establish
Roles
Example:
• Pure SRE
• Embedded SRE
3
Focus
Areas
Example:
• Stability
• Reliability
• Engineering

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Details in the SRE eBook
bit.ly/NewRelicSRE @ToriWieldt

18. Thank You
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@ToriWieldt