From a postmortem finding to a working improvement
A backup-failure alert illustrates the gap between shipping a postmortem action and giving its recipient the access needed to respond.
Articles
Guides, news and explanations about AI and reliable systems.
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Making time off workable for an SRE team
Time away depends on the work having somewhere else to go. Test the backup’s access, authority and capacity before the specialist leaves.
Make recovery time fit the on-call plan
After an interrupted night, relief needs coverage and changed commitments. Then repair the recurring demand, including work that arrives outside the rota.
Where SRE leadership changes the reliability plan
SRE leaders resolve collisions between reliability work and delivery commitments, remove response obstacles and decide what the team can actually fund.
Teach an anomaly detector what a useful surprise looks like
An unusual pattern can deserve investigation without deserving a page. Define its expected behavior, count real events and choose a response that fits the consequence.
Check whether the dashboard has learned anything new
A refreshing page can repeat an old healthy result. Follow event, collection, evaluation and delivery times to find where current evidence stopped arriving.
Choosing an SLO for the work users need completed
A queued upload illustrates the choice of SLI, target and window, including why endpoint success can miss the user’s unfinished task.
Find out whether the alert cleanup helped or only moved the work
A lower page count can hide the same failures arriving through support. Check the intended customer and responder result after changing the rule.
Error-budget calculations, balances and burn rates
Worked request and time examples explain error-budget units, remaining allowance and burn rate, plus the release policy that gives them a practical role.
Where to start with Google’s free SRE books
A chapter-level starting point for alerting, on-call coverage and postmortems, with examples of adapting the practices to local staffing and authority.