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About
Pyrra is an open-source SLO (Service Level Objective) management platform built for Prometheus-based observability stacks. It solves a long-standing pain point for SRE and platform engineering teams: turning raw Prometheus metrics into production-grade SLOs requires deep PromQL expertise, hours of manual rule-writing, and ongoing maintenance. Pyrra eliminates all of that. With Pyrra, engineers define their objectives in a concise YAML (or Kubernetes CRD) format, specifying a target percentage, evaluation window, and error/total metrics. From there, Pyrra automatically generates all necessary Prometheus recording rules, multi-window multi-burn-rate alert rules at four severity levels, and Grafana dashboards for every SLO — no hand-crafted JSON or copy-paste errors. The built-in UI lets teams filter SLOs by name, labels, or error budget health, drill down by label, and sort by remaining error budget to prioritize remediation. Spot slow degradation across custom time ranges before users are impacted. Pyrra is released under the Apache 2.0 license and integrates natively with Prometheus, Thanos, and Mimir. It supports deployment as a systemd service on bare metal, a Docker container, or a Kubernetes Operator tightly integrated with Prometheus Operator. It is ideal for SRE teams, platform engineers, and DevOps organizations that want standardized, portable SLO definitions without reinventing the wheel.
Key Features
- YAML-Driven SLO Definitions: Define Service Level Objectives using simple YAML or Kubernetes CRD resources — no PromQL expertise required.
- Automatic Recording Rule Generation: Pyrra watches SLO definitions and generates all required Prometheus recording rules for burn rates at multiple time windows automatically.
- Multi-Window Burn Rate Alerts: Generates multi-window, multi-burn-rate alert rules at four severity levels to surface real incidents while reducing alert fatigue.
- Auto-Generated Grafana Dashboards: Every SLO gets a Grafana dashboard out of the box — no hand-crafted JSON, no copy-paste errors.
- Real-Time Error Budget Tracking: View remaining error budget and consumption rate for all SLOs in a unified UI, with filtering and sorting by budget health.
Use Cases
- Platform engineering teams standardizing SLO definitions and alerting across dozens of microservices without requiring PromQL expertise from every developer.
- Site reliability engineers who want real-time error budget visibility and automated burn rate alerts to prioritize incident response effectively.
- DevOps organizations migrating from ad-hoc manual SLO management to a consistent, portable, and version-controlled approach using YAML.
- Teams running Thanos or Mimir at scale who need automated multi-window alert generation that integrates natively with their existing Prometheus-compatible backend.
- Organizations reducing on-call alert fatigue by replacing blunt threshold alerts with intelligent multi-severity burn rate alerts generated automatically by Pyrra.
Pros
- No PromQL Expertise Needed: Abstracts away complex PromQL so any engineer can define and manage SLOs with a readable YAML syntax.
- Open Source and Free: Released under Apache 2.0, Pyrra is free to use, modify, and self-host with no licensing costs or vendor lock-in.
- Flexible Deployment Options: Runs on bare metal (systemd), Docker, or Kubernetes with a native Prometheus Operator integration, fitting any infrastructure.
- Broad Backend Compatibility: Works natively with Prometheus, Thanos, and Mimir, making it suitable for a wide range of production observability stacks.
Cons
- Prometheus Ecosystem Only: Pyrra is purpose-built for Prometheus-compatible backends — it does not support other monitoring systems like Datadog or New Relic.
- Requires Existing Metrics Infrastructure: Teams must already have Prometheus (or compatible) instrumentation in place; Pyrra does not collect or store metrics itself.
- Narrowly Scoped to SLO Management: Pyrra focuses exclusively on SLOs and error budgets; it is not a general-purpose observability or APM platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
What monitoring backends does Pyrra support?
Pyrra works with Prometheus, Thanos, and Mimir out of the box, covering the most widely used Prometheus-compatible backends in production environments.
Is Pyrra free to use?
Yes. Pyrra is fully open source under the Apache 2.0 license and free to self-host. There are no paid tiers or licensing fees.
How do I define an SLO in Pyrra?
You create a ServiceLevelObjective resource in YAML (or as a Kubernetes CRD) specifying a target percentage, evaluation window, and your error/total Prometheus metrics. Pyrra handles the rest automatically.
Does Pyrra replace my existing Prometheus setup?
No. Pyrra sits alongside your existing Prometheus stack. It reads your SLO definitions and writes recording rules and alert rules back into Prometheus — it does not replace or replicate your metrics storage.
What deployment options are available?
Pyrra can be deployed as a systemd service on bare metal, as a Docker container, or as a Kubernetes Operator with native Prometheus Operator integration for cloud-native environments.
