New Time Slice SLO

config/_default/menus/menus.en.yaml

@@ -1328,16 +1328,21 @@ main:
     parent: slos
     identifier: slos_metric
     weight: 2
+  - name: Time Slice SLOs
+    url: service_management/service_level_objectives/time_slice/
+    parent: slos
+    identifier: slos_time_slice
+    weight: 3
   - name: Error Budget Alerts
     url: service_management/service_level_objectives/error_budget/
     parent: slos
     identifier: error_budget
-    weight: 3
+    weight: 4
   - name: Burn Rate Alerts
     url: service_management/service_level_objectives/burn_rate/
     parent: slos
     identifier: burn_rate
-    weight: 4
+    weight: 5
   - name: Guides
     url: service_management/service_level_objectives/guide/
     parent: slos

content/en/service_management/service_level_objectives/guide/_index.md

@@ -7,6 +7,7 @@ disable_toc: true
 
 {{< whatsnext desc="General guides:">}}
     {{< nextlink href="/service_management/service_level_objectives/guide/slo-checklist" >}}SLO Checklist{{< /nextlink >}}
+    {{< nextlink href="/service_management/service_level_objectives/guide/slo_types_comparison" >}}SLO Type Comparison{{< /nextlink >}}
 {{< /whatsnext >}}
 
 {{< whatsnext desc="Dashboard guides:">}}

content/en/service_management/service_level_objectives/guide/slo_types_comparison.md

@@ -0,0 +1,45 @@
+---
+title: SLO Type Comparison
+kind: Guide
+further_reading:
+- link: "/service_management/service_level_objectives/"
+  tag: "Documentation"
+  text: "Overview of Service Level Objectives"
+- link: "/service_management/service_level_objectives/metric/"
+  tag: "Documentation"
+  text: "Metric-based SLOs"
+- link: "/service_management/service_level_objectives/monitor/"
+  tag: "Documentation"
+  text: "Monitor-based SLOs"
+---
+
+## Overview
+
+Datadog Service Level Objectives (SLOs) are measured in the following ways: By Count (Metric-based), By Monitor Uptime (Monitor-based), and by Time Slices. Compare what functionalities are supported by each type to see which SLO meets your use case.
+
+## Comparison chart
+
+|                                                                       | **Metric-based SLO**                                                                                                                      | **Monitor-based SLO**                                                                                                                                               | **Time Slice SLO**                                                                   |
+|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
+| **Supported data types**                                              | Metrics with type of count, rate, or distribution                                                                                         | Metric Monitor types, Synthetic Monitors, and Service Checks                                                                                                        | All metric types (including gauge metrics)                                           |
+| **Group functionality**                                               | Unlimited groups per SLO                                                                                                                  | Limited to 20 monitor groups per SLO                                                                                                                                | Up to 5,000 groups per SLO                                                           |
+| **SLO details side panel History (up to 90 days of historical data)** | Can set custom time windows to view SLO info                                                                                              | Cannot set custom time windows to view SLO info                                                                                                                     | Can set custom time windows to view SLO info                                         |
+| **SLO alerting ([Error Budget][1] or [Burn Rate][2] Alerts)**         | Available for all metric-based SLOs                                                                                                       | Available for SLOs based on Metric Monitor types only (not available for Synthetic Monitors or Service Checks)                                                      | Not available for Time Slice SLOs                                                    |
+| [**SLO Status Corrections**][3]                                       | Correction periods are ignored from SLO status and error budget calculations                                                              | Correction periods are ignored from SLO status and error budget calculations                                                                                        | Correction periods are counted as uptime in SLO status and error budget calculations |
+| [**SLO Widgets**][4]                                                  | Available for Metric-based SLOs                                                                                                           | Available for all Monitor-based SLO types                                                                                                                           | Available for Time Slice SLOs                                                        |
+| [**SLO Data Source**][5]                                              | Available for this SLO type (up to 15 months of historical data available)                                                                | Not available for this SLO type                                                                                                                                     | Not yet available for Time Slice SLOs                                                |
+| **Handling missing data in the SLO calculation**                      | Missing data is ignored in SLO status and error budget calculations                                                                       | Missing data is handled based on the [underlying Monitor's configuration][6]                                                                                        | Missing data is treated as uptime in SLO status and error budget calculations        |
+| **Uptime Calculations**                                               | Uptime calculations are based on the underlying Monitor<br><br>If groups are present, overall uptime requires *all* groups to have uptime | Uptime is calculated by looking at discrete time chunks, not rolling time windows<br><br>If groups are present, overall uptime requires *all* groups to have uptime | N/A                                                                                  |
+
+
+
+## Further reading
+
+{{< partial name="whats-next/whats-next.html" >}}
+
+[1]: https://docs.datadoghq.com/service_management/service_level_objectives/error_budget/
+[2]: https://docs.datadoghq.com/service_management/service_level_objectives/burn_rate/
+[3]: https://docs.datadoghq.com/service_management/service_level_objectives/#slo-status-corrections
+[4]: https://docs.datadoghq.com/service_management/service_level_objectives/#slo-widgets
+[5]: https://docs.datadoghq.com/dashboards/guide/slo_data_source/
+[6]: https://docs.datadoghq.com/service_management/service_level_objectives/monitor/#missing-data

content/en/service_management/service_level_objectives/time_slice.md

@@ -0,0 +1,97 @@
+---
+title: Time Slice SLOs
+kind: documentation
+further_reading:
+- link: "service_management/service_level_objectives/"
+  tag: "Documentation"
+  text: "Overview of Service Level Objectives"
+---
+
+{{< jqmath-vanilla >}}
+
+## Overview
+
+Time Slice SLOs allow you to measure reliability using a custom definition of uptime. You define uptime as a condition over a metric timeseries. For example, you can create a latency SLO by defining uptime as whenever p95 latency is less than 1 second.
+
+Time Slice SLOs are a convenient alternative to Monitor-based SLOs. You can create an uptime SLO without going through a monitor so you don't have to create and maintain both a monitor and an SLO. 
+
+## Create a Time Slice SLO
+
+You can create a Time Slice SLO through the following ways:
+- [Create an SLO from the create page](#create-an-slo-from-the-create-page)
+- [Export an existing Monitor-based SLO](#export-an-existing-monitor-slo)
+- [Import from a monitor](#import-from-a-monitor)
+
+### Create an SLO from the create page
+
+{{< img src="service_management/service_level_objectives/time_slice/create_and_configuration.png" alt="Configuration options to create a Time Slice SLO" style="width:100%;" >}}
+
+1. Navigate to Service Management > SLOs
+1. Click **+ New SLO** to open up the Create SLO page.
+1. Select **By Time Slices** to define your SLo measurement. 
+1. Define your uptime condition by choosing a metric query, comparator and threshold. For example, to define uptime as whenever p95 latency is less than 1s. Alternatively, you can [import the uptime from a monitor](#import-from-a-monitor).
+1. Choose your timeframe and target
+1. Name and tag your SLO.
+1. Click **Create**.
+
+### Export an existing monitor SLO
+
+<div class="alert alert-info">Only metric monitor SLOs can be exported. Non-metric monitors or multi-monitor SLOs cannot be exported</div>
+
+Create a Time Slice SLO by exporting an existing Monitor-based SLO. From a monitor SLO click **Export to Time Slice SLO**.
+
+{{< img src="service_management/service_level_objectives/time_slice/export_monitor_slo.png" alt="On a Monitor-based SLO detail side panel, the button to Export to Time Slice is highlighted" style="width:90%;" >}}
+
+### Import from a monitor
+
+<div class="alert alert-info">Only metric monitor SLOs appear in the monitor selection for import. </div>
+
+From the Create or Edit SLO page, under *Define your SLI*, click **Import from Monitor** and select from the dropdown or search in the monitor selector.
+
+**Note**: Time Slice SLOs do not support rolling periods. Rolling periods do not transfer from a monitor query to a Time Slice query. 
+
+{{< img src="service_management/service_level_objectives/time_slice/import_from_monitor.png" alt="Highlighted option to Import From Monitor in the Define your SLI section of an SLO configuration" style="width:90%;" >}}
+
+## Uptime calculations
+
+To calculate the uptime percentage for a Time Slice SLOs, Datadog cuts the timeseries into equal-duration intervals, called "slices". The length of the interval is 5 minutes and not configurable. The space and time aggregation are determined by the metric query. For more information on space and time aggregation, see the [metrics][1] documentation for. 
+
+For each slice, there is a single value for the timeseries, and the uptime condition (such as `value < 1`) is evaluated for each slice. If the condition is met, the slice is considered uptime, otherwise it is considered downtime.
+
+### Groups and overall uptime
+
+Time Slice SLOs allows you to track uptime for individual groups, where groups are defined in the "group by" portion of the metric query. 
+
+When groups are present, uptime is calculated for each individual group. However, overall uptime works differently. In order to match existing monitor SLO functionality, Time Slice SLOs use the same definition of overall uptime. When **all** groups have uptime, it is considered overall uptime. Conversely, if **any** group has downtime, it is considered overall downtime. Overall uptime is always less than the uptime for any individual group.
+
+<!-- In the example above, environment "staging" has 5 minutes of downtime over a 24-hour period, resulting in approximately 99.652% of uptime.
+
+$$ (1440-5)/1440 *100 = ~99.652% $$
+
+Environment "dev" also had 5 minutes of downtime, resulting in the same uptime. That means that overall downtime (such as when either datacenter staging or dev had downtime) was 10 minutes since there is no overlap. This results in approximately 99.305% uptime.
+
+$$ (1440-10)/1440 *100 = ~99.652% $$ -->
+
+### Corrections
+
+Time Slice SLOs count correction periods as uptime in all calculations. Since the total time remains constant, the error budget is always a fixed amount of time as well. This is a significant simplification and improvement over how corrections are handled for monitor-based SLOs.
+
+For monitor-based SLOs, corrections are periods that are removed from the calculation. If a one-day-long correction is added to a 7-day SLO, 1 hour of downtime counts as 0.7% instead of 0.6%
+
+$$ 60/8640 *100 = ~0.7% $$
+
+Instead of 
+
+$$ 60/10080 *100 = ~0.6% $$
+
+The effects on error budget can be unusual. Removing time from an uptime SLO causes time dilation, where each minute of downtime represents a larger fraction of the total time. 
+
+### Missing data
+
+In Time Slice SLOs, missing data is always treated as uptime. If missing data is counted as downtime, the SLO product team would like to understand your use case better. Please contact the SLO product team. 
+
+**Note**: While missing data is treated as uptime, it is gray on the timeline visualization.
+
+## Further Reading
+
+{{< partial name="whats-next/whats-next.html" >}}