Use playbooks to investigate failures

Testing reliability is crucial to ensure that your workload behaves as expected under real-world conditions. Employing playbooks enables effective response strategies and minimizes downtime during incidents.

Best Practices

Develop Comprehensive Failure Playbooks

• Document detailed procedures for various failure scenarios, including known issues and potential unknowns. This is crucial for ensuring everyone knows how to respond promptly and effectively during outages or incidents.
• Include specific roles and responsibilities for team members during an incident response to enhance accountability and streamline communication.
• Regularly review and update playbooks to reflect changes in the system architecture and incorporate lessons learned from previous incidents. This keeps the playbooks relevant and effective.
• Conduct simulations or tabletop exercises using the playbooks to train the response team, helping them become familiar with the steps and improving their readiness.
• Ensure that playbooks are easily accessible to all team members and integrated into the incident management tools to facilitate quick reference during an incident.

Questions to ask your team

• Have you created detailed playbooks for your failure investigation processes?
• Are team members trained on how to use the playbooks effectively during outages?
• Do you regularly review and update the playbooks based on new learnings or changes in your infrastructure?
• How do you ensure that all relevant stakeholders are aware of the playbooks and their procedures?
• Have you conducted simulations or drills using the playbooks to test their effectiveness in real failure scenarios?

Who should be doing this?

Reliability Engineer

• Design and maintain playbooks for failure investigation.
• Ensure playbooks are updated based on lessons learned from incidents.
• Facilitate training sessions on how to use playbooks effectively.
• Work with development and operations teams to identify potential failure scenarios.
• Coordinate post-incident reviews and integrate findings into playbooks.

DevOps Team Member

• Follow the playbooks during failure incidents.
• Provide input on the effectiveness of the playbooks from hands-on experience.
• Assist in identifying gaps in the playbooks based on incident outcomes.
• Collaborate with the reliability engineer to test and validate playbook steps.
• Document any deviations from standard playbook processes during investigations.

Incident Response Manager

• Oversee the incident response process using playbooks.
• Ensure timely communication and escalation during incidents.
• Review and approve playbook updates based on incident responses.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of playbooks regularly.
• Liaise with all teams to ensure consistency in playbook utilization.

Quality Assurance Analyst

• Test the reliability of playbooks in simulated failure scenarios.
• Provide feedback on playbook clarity and usability.
• Help document best practices for playbook utilization during testing.
• Assist in ensuring that playbook procedures align with industry standards.
• Perform audits of playbook usage and effectiveness post-incident.

What evidence shows this is happening in your organization?

• Failure Investigation Playbook Template: A structured template for documenting the steps taken during a failure investigation, including sections for defining the problem, gathering evidence, determining root causes, and outlining escalation procedures.
• Reliability Testing Report: A comprehensive report summarizing the findings from reliability testing, detailing failure scenarios encountered, steps taken from the playbooks, and outcomes of the investigations.
• Incident Response Policy: A formal policy that outlines the organization’s commitment to testing reliability and the protocols for investigating failures using playbooks.
• Reliability Dashboard: A real-time dashboard that monitors system reliability metrics and displays current alerts related to failure investigations in progress, along with links to corresponding playbooks.
• Failure Response Checklist: A checklist of steps to follow when a failure occurs, ensuring that all relevant playbook procedures are executed thoroughly for consistent investigation.

Cloud Services

AWS

• AWS CloudTrail: Tracks user activity and API usage across AWS infrastructure, facilitating the investigation of failures by providing event logs.
• AWS Lambda: Allows you to run code in response to events, enabling automated responses to failure scenarios as outlined in your playbooks.
• Amazon CloudWatch: Monitors your AWS resources and applications in real-time, helping gather metrics and logs to analyze failures as specified in playbooks.
• AWS Step Functions: Coordinates components of distributed applications and microservices using visual workflows, enabling the automation of investigation steps as defined in playbooks.

Azure

• Azure Monitor: Provides a comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments, aiding in failure investigation.
• Azure Logic Apps: Automates workflows and integrates apps, data, and services, allowing for executing playbook steps automatically during failure investigation.
• Azure Automation: Provides a way to automate repetitive tasks and orchestrate complex processes, supporting the execution of playbook actions during failures.

Google Cloud Platform

• Google Cloud Operations (formerly Stackdriver): Monitors and logs application behavior, providing visibility necessary to analyze issues as they arise, in line with playbook documentation.
• Cloud Functions: Allows you to create event-driven functions that can automate responses to failure scenarios, in accordance with playbooks.
• Google Cloud Run: Enables running containers in a fully managed environment which can be part of the automation process to implement investigation steps.