Observability Manage Slos

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