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Alert presets

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Alert presets are a way to set up alert policies quickly using predefined templates. They are designed to help you get started with alerting in a matter of minutes, using Nobl9 recommended sets of policies in Nobl9.

Overview​

The following presets are available in Nobl9:

Fast burn
Alert when a high momentary burn rate risks exhausting the budget (any time window).
Slow burn for long window SLOs
Alert when the budget burns slowly and is not recovering (time windows over a week).
Slow burn for short window SLOs
Alert when the budget burns slowly and is not recovering (time windows up to one week).
Budget almost exhausted
Alert when the error budget is nearly exhausted (any time window).
Fast exhaustion above budget
Alert when the error budget is exhausting significantly and there’s still some budget remaining (any time window).
Fast exhaustion below budget
Alert when the error budget is exhausting significantly and there’s no remaining budget left (any time window).
Slow exhaustion for long window SLOs
Alert when the error budget is exhausting slowly and is not recovering (time windows over a week).
Slow exhaustion for short window SLOs
Alert when the error budget is exhausting slowly and is not recovering (time windows up to one week).
Fast budget drop
Alert me when the budget dropped by 10% over the last 15 minutes and is not recovering.
Slow budget drop
Alert me when the budget dropped by 5% over the last 1 hour and is not recovering.

Configuring alert presets​

To see available alert presets, go to the Alerts view and click the button. This view shows a list of alert presets, each with a name, description, and a set of default values for alert policy configuration.

Creating alert policy from preset
Image 1: Creating new Alert Policy from a Preset

You can choose one preset and apply it by clicking the Use Preset button.

Customizing the preset​

You may need to customize the alert preset to suit your needs better. There are two ways to create a custom alert policy in Nobl9:

  • You can select the custom preset in step 1 of the wizard.
  • Or, you can modify an existing alert preset by replacing its default values with your own. Once you're done editing, you can apply the preset to create an alert policy with your custom values. Your edited preset will then be accessible from the alert policies view.
tip

Nobl9 won't persist the customized version of an alert preset. Opening the alert preset view again will restore the original preset definitions.

If you want to re-use the same custom configuration of a preset for a different alert policy, you can duplicate the alert policy created using the customized Alert Preset. The easiest way to do that is to copy the YAML configuration of your customized preset by running thesloctl get alertpolicies [alert_policy_name] command and copying the specs.[...] block.

Starting from scratch​

If you don't want to use any preset, you can start an alert policy from scratch by selecting a Custom option on the Presets list.

Creating alert policy from preset
Image 2: Customizing alert preset

Alert policy presets in YAML​

Presets are also available in the YAML format. To use them, just copy-paste the configuration, change the project and add a preferred alertMethod.

Fast burn
apiVersion: n9/v1alpha
kind: AlertPolicy
metadata:
  name: fast-burn
  displayName: Fast burn (20x5min)
  project: default
spec:
  alertMethods: []
  conditions:
    - alertingWindow: 5m
      measurement: averageBurnRate
      value: 20
      op: gte
  coolDown: 5m
  description: There’s been a significant spike in burn rate over a brief period.
  severity: High
caution

Keep in mind that alert policies are limited to a specific project. This means they must be assigned to the same project as the SLO they are associated with. The preset options mentioned above create policies in the default project.

Before applying them, double-check that you've selected the correct project.

Alert presets in Terraform​

Alert presets are also available in Terraform. They can be treated as an example, to set up your own alert policies using predefined, Nobl9 recommended configuration.

You can access them in our Terraform Documentation.

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