Configure Prometheus recording rules to pre-aggregate SLO burn rate windows for efficient querying

Steps

1. Define recording rules for each standard burn-rate window needed for multi-window alerting: 5m, 30m, 1h, 2h, 6h, 1d, and 3d; each rule records the error rate (or error ratio) for that window using rate() on the error and total counters.
2. Name the recording rules using a consistent scheme such as slo:svc_name:error_ratio:rate5m, slo:svc_name:error_ratio:rate1h, etc.; consistent naming allows generic alert rule templates to reference rules by a predictable pattern across services.
3. Group the recording rules for each SLO into a dedicated rule group with an evaluation_interval set to the shortest window divided by a factor (e.g., evaluation_interval: 30s for a 5m recording rule); excessively short intervals waste CPU while too-long intervals reduce alert responsiveness.
4. Add a recording rule for the SLO compliance ratio itself: slo:svc_name:compliance, defined as 1 - slo:svc_name:error_ratio:rate30d; this single-metric view is useful for SLO dashboards showing current compliance at the SLO window.
5. Include a recording rule for the burn rate multiplier relative to the SLO budget: slo:svc_name:burn_rate:rate1h defined as slo:svc_name:error_ratio:rate1h / (1 - slo_target); this normalized value is directly comparable to burn rate thresholds without per-SLO threshold recalculation.
6. Validate all recording rules using promtool check rules path/to/rules.yaml before deploying; check for label conflicts, naming collisions with existing metrics, and ensure that referenced metric names exist in the Prometheus instance.