KCNA Cloud Native Observability Practice Question
Which THREE of the following are important considerations when defining SLOs (Service Level Objectives)? (Select three.)
⚠ Common exam trap
KCNA often tests confusion between SLOs and error budgets, tricking candidates into selecting 'include an error budget' as a defining consideration when error budgets are actually derived from SLOs.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
They must be aligned with business impact
Option B is correct because SLOs must be aligned with business impact: an SLO only makes sense if the reliability target reflects what users and the business actually need, so the chosen SLI and threshold are tied to a meaningful customer or revenue outcome rather than an arbitrary technical metric. Option C is correct because SLOs must be based on measurable SLIs: an SLO is a target applied to a Service Level Indicator, so the underlying measurement (for example, request latency or success rate) must be quantifiable and observable via monitoring. Option D is correct because SLOs define a target percentage over a time window: a valid SLO takes the form of a target such as 99.9% of successful requests measured over a rolling 30-day window, giving a concrete, time-bounded reliability goal. Option A is not correct as a defining consideration because the error budget is derived from the SLO (100% minus the SLO target) rather than being a required component when defining the SLO itself. Option E is not correct because minimizing infrastructure cost is a cost-optimization concern, not a criterion for setting reliability objectives, and can even conflict with achieving the intended service level.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
They should include an error budget
Why it's wrong here
An error budget is derived from the SLO's target, quantifying permitted unreliability; it is an output of the objective, not an input consideration. Teams do use budgets to govern release velocity, so it is tempting. Defining SLOs requires selecting the indicator, target and measurement window instead.
- ✓
They must be aligned with business impact
Why this is correct
An SLO only matters if it reflects what users and the business actually care about, so targets must trace to business impact rather than arbitrary infrastructure metrics. This alignment ensures reliability investment addresses genuine customer-facing risk instead of technical vanity measures.
- ✓
They must be based on measurable SLIs
Why this is correct
SLOs must be expressed through SLIs that are directly measurable from telemetry, such as request latency or error rate. Without a quantifiable indicator, a target cannot be evaluated or tracked over time, making measurability a prerequisite rather than an optional refinement.
- ✓
They define a target percentage over a time window
Why this is correct
An SLO is a numeric target, typically a percentage of good events, evaluated across a defined compliance window such as 28 days. Both the percentage and the time window are required; a bare threshold without a window cannot be assessed.
- ✗
They should minimize infrastructure cost
Why it's wrong here
Cost reduction is a business or capacity concern, not a property of an SLO, which specifies a reliability target for a service indicator. Cost optimisation is tempting because budgets matter operationally. SLOs instead require a user-centric SLI, a numeric target and a defined compliance window.
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Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official CNCF exam blueprint
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