DevOps vs SRE: looking at the variance between the two in 2021

 

DevOps vs SRE- understanding the thin line in 2021

DevOps and SRE (Software Reliability Engineering) are two sides of the same coin. Google first introduced DevOps and then approached the new methodology called SRE. Both may sound similar but they’re not, trust me. In this article, let us explain the difference between DevOps and SRE in the simplest way possible.

People often get confused between these two terms and their functionalities. First of all, we have to have a clear definition of What is DevOps? And What is SRE?

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a culture or a mindset which combines Developers and Operations together. Traditionally, the developers worked to develop the code and throw it to the operations team. The operations team was responsible to keep that code running. There used to be a struggle between these 2 teams more often. Because the developers don’t know about the operational tasks and the operation team had no knowledge of the coding part. Many companies were facing this conflict and many times it was hard to have a balance. DevOps came in light to solve this problem. DevOps was implemented to remove the barrier between developers and operators of any company.

Skills required for a DevOps Engineer

* Flexibility to work in an ever-changing coding process.
* Knowledge and expertise with various Ops and automation tools.
* High-quality skills in scripting code.
* Comfortable to handle frequent testing and incremental releases.
* Ability to understand cloud and infrastructure.
* Soft skills for better collaboration with the team.

In case you are trying to get into a Devops profile or role you can also refer to our below posts:
Roles and Responsibilities of a DevOps Professional
Essential Soft Skills needed to become a Devops Pro in 2021

What is SRE?

SRE or Site Reliability Engineering blends software engineering and operations together. The work of SREs can be divided in 2 major parts: Development tasks and Operations tasks. The SRE is responsible for information sharing between Dev and Ops departments. SRE makes the whole process of DevOps smooth and easy-going.

As per Liz Fong-Jones (SRE at Google), SRE is a concrete class which implements DevOps:

Class SRE implements DevOps

So, SRE is a part of DevOps. There should not be a discussion about which is better? DevOps or SRE? Both are quite different and work together to make things better in any organization. Thus, it is not really ‘SRE vs DevOps’, it is more like ‘SRE in DevOps’.

Skills required for an SRE Engineer

* Have a software-centric mindset.
* Ability to postmortem unexpected accidents to solve future risks.
* Comfortable to handle operations, monitoring, and alerting.
* Relish change and frequent releases.
* Ability to convince organizations to do what actually needs to be done.

If you are planning to adopt and shape into an SRE role, refer to the following posts:
DevOps 2021: Paving your way into SRE
DevOps 2021: A Complete Guide To Transition From a SysAdmin to DevOps Role

The Difference between DevOps and SRE

So the main objective of DevOps is to combine Developers and Operations together. According to Google: DevOps is all about ‘What’ needs to be done and SRE is all about ‘How’ things can be done. SRE concludes that everyone is responsible for everything.

A DevOps engineer not only has complete knowledge of SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle), but he has the ability to execute constant changes any infrastructure might have. So, such skills will be developed with years of experience and knowledge. But an SRE’s job is to make sure that the site is always working in any circumstances.

Let us clarify the difference between DevOps and SRE with the Google approach, as it is easier to understand for everyone.

As per Google, there are 5 pillars where SRE complies with DevOps:

1. Reduce organization silos
Silos means isolation of one department from another. Usually, large organizations have various departments. Each department works separately. More often they don’t communicate with each other. This leads the team to unable to see the larger goal they are serving together. Besides that, this might lead to miscommunications and disappointments.

DevOps will work on reducing the silos. It will make sure that everyone is working to fulfill a common goal. There are not teams that are not serving the actual purpose of the organization. SRE will share the ownership. It will use the same tool and techniques across each and every team. SRE will not focus on silos. But it will try to share the ownership across the organization.

2. Accept failure as Normal
Failure can’t be avoided. Computers do make mistakes. And when humans are involved, the chances of mistakes are even higher. Even though the goal wit DevOps is to handle errors, we cannot get rid of these errors completely. In DevOps culture, it is normal to make mistakes. Errors are acceptable and work as a chance to learn from it.

SRE does SLOs and Blameless PMOs to make sure there are not any errors. Even if we might learn from those errors. SRE uses formulas to check errors. The formula is measured with SLIs (Service Level Indicators) and SLOs (Service Level Objective).

3. Implement gradual change
Most of the companies encourage changes in the system. The goal here is constant improvements. There will be new releases, new updates every now and then.
DevOps handles such changes in a gradual way. SRE wants such changes small and regular ones. DevOps and SRE both are encourage changes. SREs wil manage these changes with keeping the cost of the failure in center. The cost of the failure should be reduced along with the changes.In the end, there should be an improvement in product quality with gradual changes.

4. Leverage Tooling and Automation – Automate this year’s job away
DevOps and SRE work to improve automation. Both try to add as much automation as possible. DevOps promotes automation and tools adoption. SRE will focus that everyone has access to the updated tools of automation and technologies.
SRE does not use a specific set of tools and technologies to complete a particular task. But it works to automate the year’s job away. Thus it is focused on the API. SRE wants the team to use the same tools and services to avoid any silos in DevOps. This will avoid incompatibility and mismanagement.

5. Measure everything – Measure toil and reliability
DevOps and SRE support automation. And an automated system needs continuous measurement to ensure everything is going smoothly.

DevOps focus on the process performance and results via a feedback loop. SREs will measure SLOs. SRE accepts Operations as a software problem. So it will measure the toil and reliability of Ops. SRE will assure that everyone in the organization agrees to the reliability measurement standards.

Conclusion

So, is there a difference between DevOps and SREs? DevOps, as it seems, is more of a “free spirit”, with the definition and implementation approach varying from organization to organization.

However, DevOps and SRE teams are not so different. DevOps and SRE Don’t Compete With Each Other.Both Devops & SRE help combine developer and operation teams, while sharing similar responsibilities and focusing on enabling automation and reliability.

So we should wisely use the power of SRE and blend with our Devops roadmap to build reliable software and maintain availability & observability.