---
title: Composite service level objectives (SLOs)
description: A composite SLO aggregates multiple individual SLOs into a single health indicator using a weighted average. Use composite SLOs to: Track reliability...
url: https://docs-v3-preview.elastic.dev/elastic/docs-content/pull/7385/solutions/observability/incident-management/create-a-composite-slo
products:
  - Elastic Cloud Serverless
  - Elastic Observability
applies_to:
  - Elastic Cloud Serverless: Preview
  - Elastic Stack: Planned
---

# Composite service level objectives (SLOs)
A composite SLO aggregates multiple individual SLOs into a single health indicator using a weighted average. Use composite SLOs to:
- Track reliability at the system or platform level instead of per service
- Define service importance using weights so the composite score reflects your priorities
- Detect platform-wide reliability degradation early through multi-window burn-rate alerts across all member SLOs

For example, you could create a "Checkout Flow Health" composite SLO that combines SLOs for your payment service, cart service, and inventory service.
<important>
  **For Observability serverless projects**, the **Editor** role or higher is required to create SLOs. To learn more, refer to [Assign user roles and privileges](/elastic/docs-content/pull/7385/deploy-manage/users-roles/cloud-organization/user-roles#general-assign-user-roles).**For Elastic Stack**, to create and manage SLOs, you need an [appropriate license](https://www.elastic.co/subscriptions), an Elasticsearch cluster with both `transform` and `ingest` [node roles](https://docs-v3-preview.elastic.dev/elastic/elasticsearch/tree/main/reference/elasticsearch/configuration-reference/node-settings#node-roles) present, and [SLO access](https://docs-v3-preview.elastic.dev/elastic/docs-content/pull/7385/solutions/observability/incident-management/configure-service-level-objective-slo-access) must be configured.
</important>

<note>
  Composite SLOs are enabled automatically for Elastic Observability Serverless and Elastic Cloud Hosted deployments. For self-managed deployments, add the following to your `kibana.yml` to enable the feature:
  ```yaml
  feature_flags.overrides:
    slo.compositeSloEnabled: true
  ```
</note>


## Create and configure a composite SLO

Follow these steps to create and configure a composite SLO:
<stepper>
  <step title="Create a new composite SLO">
    Create a new composite SLO from the **SLOs** page:
    1. Find **SLOs** in the main menu or use the [global search field](https://docs-v3-preview.elastic.dev/elastic/docs-content/pull/7385/explore-analyze/find-and-organize/find-apps-and-objects).
    2. Select **Create SLO**, then select **Create composite SLO**.
  </step>

  <step title="Select member SLOs">
    Add the individual SLOs that make up the composite SLO. A composite SLO can include up to 25 member SLOs.For each member SLO, set the following:
    - **SLO**: Select an existing SLO. When the selected SLO has multiple instances (created using the **Group by** field), you can optionally filter to specific **Instances**. By default, the composite SLO includes all instances of the selected SLO.
    - **Weight**: A numeric weight that controls how much this SLO contributes to the composite **SLI value**. Weights are relative. For example, a weight of 2 counts twice as much as a weight of 1. The default weight is 1.
  </step>

  <step title="Set objectives">
    Set the following objectives for your composite SLO:
    <definitions>
      <definition term="Time window">
        Select a rolling time window duration for your composite SLO. Rolling windows use data from a fixed lookback period that moves forward as time passes. For example, the last 30 days.
        From the **Time window** menu, select your duration.
      </definition>
      <definition term="Budgeting method">
        The **Occurrences** budgeting method, which computes the SLI using the number of good events and the number of total events across all member SLOs.
      </definition>
      <definition term="Target">
        Set the composite SLO's target as a percentage. This target is independent of the targets set on individual member SLOs.
      </definition>
    </definitions>
  </step>

  <step title="Name, description, and tags">
    Give your composite SLO a **Name**, an optional **Description** to provide context for what system or platform it represents, and any relevant **Tags** that you can use for filtering.
  </step>
</stepper>


## View composite SLOs

Your composite SLO appears on the **Composite SLOs** tab of the **SLOs** page. Each row displays:
- **Status**: Whether the composite SLO is currently meeting its target.
- **Name**: The name of the composite SLO.
- **Tags**: Labels associated with the composite SLO that you can use for filtering.
- **Healthy members**: The number of member SLOs currently meeting their targets. For example, 3 of 25.
- **Objective**: The composite SLO's target percentage, set independently from the targets of individual member SLOs.
- **SLI value**: The weighted average of all member SLI values.
- **Historical status**: A graphical representation of the the composite SLOs history.
- **Budget remaining**: How much error budget remains until the composite SLO violates its target.
- **Active alerts**: The number of active alerts across the underlying member SLOs.
- **Burn rate**: The rate at which the composite SLO is consuming its error budget, shown over 5-minute, 1-hour, and 1-day windows.
- **Time window**: The rolling time window over which the composite SLO is evaluated.

Expand a row to see the individual member SLOs and their data.