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name: observability-manage-slos description: > Create and manage SLOs in Elastic Observability using the Kibana API. Use when defining SLIs, setting error budgets, or managing SLO lifecycle. metadata: author: elastic version: 0.2.0

Service-Level Objectives (SLOs)

Create and manage SLOs in Elastic Observability. SLOs track service performance against measurable targets using service-level indicators (SLIs) computed from Elasticsearch data.

Authentication

SLO operations go through the Kibana API. Authenticate with either an API key or basic auth:

# API key
curl -H "Authorization: ApiKey <base64-encoded-key>" -H "kbn-xsrf: true" <KIBANA_URL>/api/observability/slos

# Basic auth
curl -u "$KIBANA_USER:$KIBANA_PASSWORD" -H "kbn-xsrf: true" <KIBANA_URL>/api/observability/slos

For non-default spaces, prefix the path: /s/<space_id>/api/observability/slos.

Include kbn-xsrf: true on all POST, PUT, and DELETE requests.

SLI Types

Type	API value	Use case
Custom KQL	sli.kql.custom	Raw logs — good/total using KQL queries
Custom metric	sli.metric.custom	Metric fields — equations with aggregations
Timeslice metric	sli.metric.timeslice	Metric fields — per-slice threshold check
Histogram metric	sli.histogram.custom	Histogram fields — range/value_count
APM latency	sli.apm.transactionDuration	APM — latency threshold
APM availability	sli.apm.transactionErrorRate	APM — success rate
Synthetics availability	sli.synthetics.availability	Synthetics monitors — uptime percentage

Guidelines

• objective.target is a decimal between 0 and 1 (for example 0.995 for 99.5%).
• Timeslice metric indicators require budgetingMethod: "timeslices".
• Updating an SLO resets the underlying transform — historical data is recomputed.
• The cluster needs nodes with both transform and ingest roles.
• Use POST .../slos/{id}/_reset when an SLO is stuck or after index mapping changes.
• Group-by SLOs create one instance per unique value — avoid high-cardinality fields.
• Synthetics SLOs are auto-grouped by monitor and location; do not set groupBy manually.
• Burn rate alert rules are not auto-created using the API — set them up separately.

Additional references

For official documentation, refer to the following resources:

SLO documentation

• Service-level objectives (SLOs) — concepts, SLI types, budgeting methods, and dashboard panels.
• Create an SLO — step-by-step guide for creating SLOs in the Kibana UI.
• View and manage SLOs — searching, filtering, and managing existing SLOs.

Kibana SLO API

• Create an SLO — full request body schema with all SLI type payloads.
• Get an SLO | Update | Delete | Reset
• Enable | Disable | Get definitions

Troubleshooting and access

• Troubleshoot SLOs
• Configure SLO access
• Create an SLO burn rate rule