Working together: SRE &
Platform Engineering
Marcus Vechiato
25/05/2023
Agenda
● SRE and Platform Engineering - Main Goals and Objectives
● Summary key Concepts
○ What is SRE?
○ What is Platform Engineering?
● Food for thought
○ SRE Practice
○ Platform Engineering
● Benefits of Platform Engineering
● How SREs can benefit from Platform Engineering
● Platform Engineering IDP Approach
● Q&A
SRE and Platform Engineering - Main Goals and Objectives
Platform Engineering focuses on creating
self-service provisioning, standardized
environments, and efficient deployment
pipelines
SRE focuses on automating tasks,
streamlining incident response, and
reducing toil
Platform Engineering focuses on creating
a scalable, stable and resilient platform
infrastructure.
SRE provides insights into
performance bottlenecks and helps
optimize system scalability
Scalability
and
Reliability
Efficiency
SRE
Focus on user-facing
experience
Platform Engineering
Focus on developer
experience
User
Experience
SRE and Platform Engineering work together to ensure systems can scale effectively to meet
growing demands while aim to ensure reliability and availability.
What is SRE?
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"SRE is what
happens when you
ask a software
engineer to design
an operations
team."
Google SRE Book
"SRE is what you
get when you
treat operations
as if it’s a
software
problem…"
Google
Why SRE?
SRE serves as a practical
embodiment of DevOps,
implementing principles and
practices to ensure reliability,
scalability and efficiency in
systems ops
DevOps is a
philosophy that
unifies Developers
and Operations
What is SRE? :: Key Principles
SRE principles contribute
to the reliability and
performance of software
systems by emphasizing
proactive monitoring,
incident response, error
budget management,
and continuous
improvement to ensure
high availability and
optimized performance.
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Incident
Response
Monitoring
Error
Budget
SLOs
Postmortems
Key Principles
SRE-to-developer
ratio
Toil
Food for thought - SRE Practice
How mature is
your SRE
practice?
What SRE can
do better?
Is SRE being
successful in your
organization?
Cloud
Costs
Tool Creep SRE identity
centricity
Food for thought - SRE Identity Centricity
Product
Centric
Reliability
User
Experience
Centric
Incident
Centric
SRE
Identity
What is Platform Engineering?
Standardization Self-service Automation
"Platform engineering is the discipline of
building and operating self-service internal
developer platforms (IDPs) for software
delivery and life cycle management" Gartner
Food for thought - Platform Engineering
Things to consider before adopting Platform Engineering:
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Benefits of Platform Engineering
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Supports CI/CD
practices
05 ● Provides infrastructure, tools, and pipelines for automated build, test,
and deployment processes
Infrastructure
as Code (IaC)
04 ● Embraces Infrastructure as Code principles
Self-Service
03
Automation
02
● Automates repetitive tasks and processes
● Saves time, reduces errors, and accelerates software delivery
● Examples: provisioning environments, building and testing code, deploying
applications
● Enables teams to provision and manage their own resources and services
● Reduces dependencies and minimizes bottlenecks in development and
deployment processes
● Establishes standardized practices, tools, and frameworks
● Reduces complexity and streamlines processes
● Ensures consistency and improves efficiency across the organization
Standardization
01
How SREs can benefit from Platform Engineering
● Implementing an IDP internaldeveloperplatform.org:
○ Improve Developer experience and productivity
■ Faster onboarding of new team members
■ Reduce developers cognitive load
■ Reduce time spent provisioning and maintaining new systems while:
● Guardrails best practices/standards
● Address regulatory requirements
● Reduces the burden of cumbersome internal processes "bureaucracy"
○ Reduces toil
○ Improves team efficiency
○ Free up SRE time to work on noble matters
Platform Engineering IDP Approach
● Establish a Platform Team to work on the IDP
● IDP approach:
○ CLI (Command line interface) + Crossplane (crossplane.io)
■ Code Repository(GitHub):
● Initial repository creation based on predefined templates with best practices in
place as observability, hardening, etc…
● CI/CD creation and deploy in multiple environments as STG/Prod/etc
● Repository of templates open to the Engineering team to collaborate
○ Backstage (backstage.io) - Developer Portal
■ Service Catalog
■ Self-service Documentation
■ Code Visibility / System dependencies
■ Open source plugins
Q&A

Working together SRE & Platform Engineering

  • 1.
    Working together: SRE& Platform Engineering Marcus Vechiato 25/05/2023
  • 2.
    Agenda ● SRE andPlatform Engineering - Main Goals and Objectives ● Summary key Concepts ○ What is SRE? ○ What is Platform Engineering? ● Food for thought ○ SRE Practice ○ Platform Engineering ● Benefits of Platform Engineering ● How SREs can benefit from Platform Engineering ● Platform Engineering IDP Approach ● Q&A
  • 3.
    SRE and PlatformEngineering - Main Goals and Objectives Platform Engineering focuses on creating self-service provisioning, standardized environments, and efficient deployment pipelines SRE focuses on automating tasks, streamlining incident response, and reducing toil Platform Engineering focuses on creating a scalable, stable and resilient platform infrastructure. SRE provides insights into performance bottlenecks and helps optimize system scalability Scalability and Reliability Efficiency SRE Focus on user-facing experience Platform Engineering Focus on developer experience User Experience SRE and Platform Engineering work together to ensure systems can scale effectively to meet growing demands while aim to ensure reliability and availability.
  • 4.
    What is SRE? Vestibulumnec congue tempus Lorem ipsum dolor sit dolor amet, consectetur nec adipiscing elit, sed do ipsum eiusmod tempor. Donec facilisis lacus eget sit nec lorem mauris. Vestibulum nec congue tempus Lorem ipsum dolor sit dolor amet, consectetur nec adipiscing elit, sed do ipsum eiusmod tempor. Donec facilisis lacus eget sit nec lorem mauris. "SRE is what happens when you ask a software engineer to design an operations team." Google SRE Book "SRE is what you get when you treat operations as if it’s a software problem…" Google
  • 5.
    Why SRE? SRE servesas a practical embodiment of DevOps, implementing principles and practices to ensure reliability, scalability and efficiency in systems ops DevOps is a philosophy that unifies Developers and Operations
  • 6.
    What is SRE?:: Key Principles SRE principles contribute to the reliability and performance of software systems by emphasizing proactive monitoring, incident response, error budget management, and continuous improvement to ensure high availability and optimized performance. Lorem ipsum congue tempus Lorem ipsum tempus Incident Response Monitoring Error Budget SLOs Postmortems Key Principles
  • 7.
    SRE-to-developer ratio Toil Food for thought- SRE Practice How mature is your SRE practice? What SRE can do better? Is SRE being successful in your organization? Cloud Costs Tool Creep SRE identity centricity
  • 8.
    Food for thought- SRE Identity Centricity Product Centric Reliability User Experience Centric Incident Centric SRE Identity
  • 9.
    What is PlatformEngineering? Standardization Self-service Automation "Platform engineering is the discipline of building and operating self-service internal developer platforms (IDPs) for software delivery and life cycle management" Gartner
  • 10.
    Food for thought- Platform Engineering Things to consider before adopting Platform Engineering: 5 S R E m i n d s e t a n d r e s p o n s i b i l i t i e s C a n a s u b s e t o f t h e S R E r o l e b e t r a n s f e r r e d t o t h e d e v e l o p e r s r o l e ? 4 L e g a c y o r n o n - c l o u d - r e a d y s y s t e m s / c u r r e n t s t a t e P l a t f o r m e n g i n e e r i n g w i l l n o t fi x y o u r c u r r e n t s t a t e . E v e r y t h i n g m u s t b e m i g r a t e d t o b e n e fi t 3 W h i c h a r e t h e p a i n s a r e y o u e x p e c t i n g t o a d d r e s s ? S y s t e m s D o c u m e n t a t i o n , T o i l r e d u c t i o n , D e v e l o p e r e x p e r i e n c e f r a g m e n t a t i o n , c o g n i t i v e l o a d , p e r f o r m a n c e i s s u e s S t a n d a r d i z a t i o n i s a c o n c e r n ? T o o l s c r e e p , e v e r y t e a m / t r i b e / s q u a d h a s t h e i r o w n s t a n d a r d s ? I s i t a s o u r c e o f t o i l ? 2 1 H o w b i g i s y o u r e n g i n e e r i n g t e a m ? H u n d r e d s ? t h o u s a n d s ?
  • 11.
    Benefits of PlatformEngineering Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet at nec at adipiscing 05 ● Donec risus dolor porta venenatis ● Pharetra luctus felis ● Proin in tellus felis volutpat Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet at nec at adipiscing 04 ● Donec risus dolor porta venenatis ● Pharetra luctus felis ● Proin in tellus felis volutpat Supports CI/CD practices 05 ● Provides infrastructure, tools, and pipelines for automated build, test, and deployment processes Infrastructure as Code (IaC) 04 ● Embraces Infrastructure as Code principles Self-Service 03 Automation 02 ● Automates repetitive tasks and processes ● Saves time, reduces errors, and accelerates software delivery ● Examples: provisioning environments, building and testing code, deploying applications ● Enables teams to provision and manage their own resources and services ● Reduces dependencies and minimizes bottlenecks in development and deployment processes ● Establishes standardized practices, tools, and frameworks ● Reduces complexity and streamlines processes ● Ensures consistency and improves efficiency across the organization Standardization 01
  • 12.
    How SREs canbenefit from Platform Engineering ● Implementing an IDP internaldeveloperplatform.org: ○ Improve Developer experience and productivity ■ Faster onboarding of new team members ■ Reduce developers cognitive load ■ Reduce time spent provisioning and maintaining new systems while: ● Guardrails best practices/standards ● Address regulatory requirements ● Reduces the burden of cumbersome internal processes "bureaucracy" ○ Reduces toil ○ Improves team efficiency ○ Free up SRE time to work on noble matters
  • 13.
    Platform Engineering IDPApproach ● Establish a Platform Team to work on the IDP ● IDP approach: ○ CLI (Command line interface) + Crossplane (crossplane.io) ■ Code Repository(GitHub): ● Initial repository creation based on predefined templates with best practices in place as observability, hardening, etc… ● CI/CD creation and deploy in multiple environments as STG/Prod/etc ● Repository of templates open to the Engineering team to collaborate ○ Backstage (backstage.io) - Developer Portal ■ Service Catalog ■ Self-service Documentation ■ Code Visibility / System dependencies ■ Open source plugins
  • 14.