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