PeopleCert Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Foundation v1.2 DevOps-SRE Exam Dumps: Updated Questions & Answers (December 2025)

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

SRE and modern DevOps best practices require that build artifacts—such as binaries, container images, and deployment packages—be stored in a secure, versioned artifact repository. These repositories ensure integrity, traceability, immutability, and security of deployment packages.

While the SRE Book does not use the ITIL term DML, it emphasizes:

“All production binaries should be stored in a secure, versioned repository to ensure consistent, repeatable, and trustworthy deployments.”

— Site Reliability Engineering Book, section on Release Engineering

The SRE Workbook expands on this principle by emphasizing signed and verified artifacts:

“To ensure safe rollout, artifacts must be built once, stored securely, signed, versioned, and deployed from a controlled artifact repository.”

Why the other options are incorrect:

A A CMS manages configuration, not deployment artifacts.

B Subversion is a source code repository, not an artifact repository.

C A DML is an ITIL concept, but SRE practice does not rely on it; instead, SRE uses modern artifact repositories (e.g., GCR, ACR, Artifactory).

Thus, the correct answer is D.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is a critical component of organizational resilience. While not unique to SRE, SRE strongly intersects with continuity planning because reliable systems must continue functioning during disruptions. According to Google’s SRE principles, reliability extends beyond typical outages and includes “ensuring services continue to operate even under exceptional conditions.” (SRE Book – Chapter: Addressing Risks). A business continuity plan specifically outlines how essential operations are maintained during major disruptions such as natural disasters, data center outages, or large-scale system failures.

Option A—“The way the organization maintains operations during a disaster”—matches the formal definition of BCP.

Option B refers to disaster recovery (DR), which is separate; DR focuses on restoring systems, not maintaining ongoing operations.

Option C refers to configuration management activities, not continuity.

Option D refers to risk management, which informs BCP but does not define it.

Therefore, A is the correct answer because it directly reflects the purpose of continuity planning as supported by reliability-focused guidance.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

When a team exceeds its error budget, SRE practice requires applying error budget policies that restrict feature releases and shift focus toward reliability improvement. The idea is to prevent further degradation of user experience and ensure the service meets the agreed reliability targets.

The Site Reliability Engineering Book, Chapter “Service Level Objectives,” states:

“If the service exceeds its error budget, all new feature launches or risky changes are halted until reliability returns to acceptable levels. Engineering work should be directed toward addressing the causes of the budget overrun.”

This aligns with option A, which describes a reliability-focused response during sprint planning. Limiting sprint planning to post-mortem action items and reliability improvements is a direct application of error budget policies.

Additional guidance from the SRE Workbook:

“Error budget burn should directly influence decision-making. When the budget is exhausted, the team must focus on remediation work rather than new features.”

Why the other options are incorrect:

B Reviewing the error budget’s realism can be done periodically, but it is not the immediate consequence of a breach.

C Extending the error budget invalidates its purpose and is discouraged.

D Ignoring the error budget contradicts the entire SRE model and Google’s official guidance.

Therefore, A is the only correct answer.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Google’s SRE definition is explicit: “Site Reliability Engineering is what happens when you ask a software engineer to design an operations team.” (SRE Book – Introduction). This clearly defines SRE as a software engineering approach applied to operational problems. The goal is to use software techniques—automation, coding, testing, version control, CI/CD, observability—to improve reliability and reduce toil. The book emphasizes: “SRE applies software engineering to operations work.” (SRE Book – What Is SRE?).

Option C is the only answer fully aligned with the official definition.

Options A, B, and D do not correspond to the SRE definition provided by Google.

Thus, the correct missing phrase is software engineering.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

A blameless post-mortem is a foundational SRE practice that encourages truthful, detailed reporting after an incident. The purpose is to learn, not punish. Google SRE emphasizes that engineers must feel psychologically safe to report what they did, what they assumed, and why they made those decisions.

From the Site Reliability Engineering Book, Chapter “Postmortem Culture”:

“Blameless postmortems encourage engineers to share the full details of their actions and assumptions without fear of punishment, enabling learning and preventing repeated failures.”

The book further states:

“Understanding the assumptions made during an incident is critical to uncovering systemic issues.”

Thus:

Engineers must report without fear of retribution

They must report assumptions and decisions made during the incident

Therefore, the correct answer is C. Both A and B.

Why the other options are insufficient:

A Only partially correct

B Only partially correct

D Testing data may be included, but it is not the defining feature of blameless postmortems

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

Simplicity is a core SRE design principle. Google states: “Small, frequent, automated changes reduce risk and improve system stability.” (SRE Book – Release Engineering). Automating continuous, small deployments creates a simple and repeatable pipeline that increases agility while maintaining reliability. This approach aligns with both DevOps and SRE practices: reducing deployment complexity, lowering blast radius, and supporting rapid iteration.

Option B best reflects this philosophy: automated, continuous small deployments provide simplicity, stability, and agility simultaneously.

Option A improves process clarity but does not directly affect agility.

Option C is beneficial but broader and not specific to simplicity.

Option D focuses on control rather than agility.

Thus, B is correct.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

High turnover in IT operations roles is often driven by a combination of factors, not just one. The Google SRE Book, Chapter “Eliminating Toil,” outlines that excessive toil, unpredictable work, and overload contribute to burnout and churn:

“Excessive operational workload and interrupt-driven work lead to burnout and high attrition among engineering and operational staff.”

The SRE Workbook adds:

“Teams overwhelmed with toil struggle to innovate, automate, or develop new skills, creating frustration and increasing turnover.”

Each option listed represents a recognized driver of burnout in SRE and operations environments:

Overload and disruptive work patterns are known contributors to burnout.

Lack of time for skills development demotivates engineers and prevents career growth.

Backlog-driven cultures force teams into reactive rather than proactive work.

The combination of these factors matches common causes of attrition in operations teams. Therefore, all of the above is the correct answer.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

The term “wisdom of production” refers to the insights gained from real systems running under actual production conditions. Only production environments exhibit real user behavior, real workloads, true performance characteristics, and authentic failure modes. This concept is rooted in the SRE philosophy that production is the ultimate source of truth for understanding system behavior.

From the SRE Workbook, Chapter “Monitoring”:

“Only production provides the full truth about how a system behaves under real workloads. Production is the ultimate source of wisdom about the system.”

This makes clear that wisdom gained from production is indispensable. Testing and staging environments cannot reproduce all real-world variables, usage patterns, and failure pathways.

Why the other options are incorrect:

A describes engineering approaches but does not define “wisdom of production.”

C is incorrect because staging environments do not provide production wisdom.

D relates to automation strategy, not production insights.

Thus, the accurate meaning of the term is B — The wisdom gained from something running in production.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

In the Full SRE model, reliability becomes a first-class citizen because SREs own the complete operational responsibility for the service and apply SRE principles end-to-end. The Google SRE Book describes several adoption models (Consulting, Embedded, and Full), and only the Full SRE model has SREs fully accountable for reliability outcomes.

From the Site Reliability Engineering Book, Chapter “SRE Engagement Models”:

“In the Full SRE model, the SRE team is responsible for end-to-end reliability. Reliability becomes a first-class objective, supported through SLOs, error budgets, and systematic reduction of toil.”

The Full model includes:

Full ownership of reliability

Enforcement of SLOs

Error budget policies

Engineering-driven improvement

Other models:

Consulting → SRE gives guidance but doesn’t own reliability

Embedded → temporary embedding to train teams, not full ownership

Platform → focuses on shared tooling, not service ownership

Thus, D. Full is correct.

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation From Exact Extract:

SRE applies economic principles, including diminishing marginal returns, to reliability engineering. As per the SRE Book: “Improving reliability becomes more expensive as the target approaches 100%, moving from increasing returns, to diminishing returns, and eventually negative returns.” (SRE Book – SLO Economics). This framework helps explain why striving for 100% availability is impractical and cost-ineffective.

The three recognized stages are:

Increasing returns – early improvements are inexpensive and highly impactful

Diminishing returns – costs rise while benefits shrink

Negative returns – achieving additional “nines” may reduce value due to slowed innovation

“Possible returns” is not part of this model.

Thus, D is the correct answer.