Cloud Digital Leader Scaling with Google Cloud operations Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  SLI is the contract with customers; SLO is the internal target; SLA is the measurement.

  Why it's wrong here

  This option scrambles the roles of SLI and SLA. An SLI (Service Level Indicator) is a quantitative measure of a specific aspect of service performance—such as request latency or error rate—not a contract with customers. An SLA (Service Level Agreement) is a formal contract that specifies expected service levels and often includes remedies or credits if those levels are not met. The SLO (Service Level Objective) is indeed the internal target, but the SLI is simply the metric used to track progress toward that target.

• ✓

  SLI is the measured metric; SLO is the internal target for that metric; SLA is the contractual customer commitment.

  Why this is correct

  This option correctly identifies the hierarchy among the three concepts. An SLI is the actual measured metric that quantifies service performance, such as 'the proportion of requests completed successfully' or 'latency at the 95th percentile.' An SLO is an internal target value for that SLI, e.g., 'maintain 99.9% availability over a 30-day window,' which guides engineering priorities. An SLA is a contractual commitment to a customer that often sets a stricter threshold and defines compensations, such as 'if availability falls below 99.5%, issue a service credit—the SLA is a business agreement, not just an engineering metric.'

• ✗

  SLI, SLO, and SLA are all the same thing — different names for uptime guarantees.

  Why it's wrong here

  This option falsely equates three distinct reliability concepts. An SLI is the measured indicator that quantifies performance (e.g., 99.95% availability or average response time). An SLO is an internal reliability goal set on that SLI, such as maintaining availability above 99.9% over a rolling quarter. An SLA is a contractual obligation to an external customer, often with a stricter threshold and financial consequences for breach—treating them as synonyms obscures the different roles they play in operational decision-making and accountability.

• ✗

  SLA is measured in milliseconds; SLO is measured in percentage; SLI has no unit.

  Why it's wrong here

  This option incorrectly assigns fixed units to SLI, SLO, and SLA. An SLI is a metric that can be measured in any unit appropriate to the service attribute: availability is often a percentage, latency is typically in milliseconds, and throughput might be requests per second. An SLO is a target value for an SLI, so its unit matches the SLI it constrains—for example, an SLO of 99.9% availability or p99 latency under 200 ms. SLA terms may reference these same units but are distinguished by being contractual commitments, not by any particular measurement unit.

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