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@squadcast ・ Jul 04,2024 ・ 9 min read ・ 120 views ・ Originally posted on www.squadcast.com
This blog post explores the concept of runbooksand how they can be leveraged to streamline incident management. It dives into the various types of runbooks, including procedural, executable, and automated runbooks. The blog emphasizes the benefits of automated runbooks, outlining how they can automate repetitive tasks across servers, such as virtual machine management, log management, and configuration management.
Several popular runbook automation tools are explored, including Azure Automation, Rundeck, Ansible, and Squadcast Runbooks. The blog highlights key considerations when creating runbooks, including understanding your application, gathering requirements, and utilizing integration packs. It also details best practices for writing runbooks, including creating flowcharts and diagrams, and storing runbooks in a central location.
The blog concludes by differentiating between runbooks and SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures), and playbooks. It emphasizes that by strategically combining automation and process management, you can ensure your runbooks are up-to-date and readily available to address incidents efficiently.
This blog post explores how automated runbooks can expedite your incident management process. You’ll learn how to implement runbook automation to reduce repetitive tasks and streamline operations.
A runbook is a predefined set of instructions or procedures, typically executed manually by a system engineer. Imagine you’re upgrading a production application; a runbook would outline the documented steps involved. This can include procedures to initiate, stop, monitor, and troubleshoot the system.
Recent studies indicate that engineering teams dedicate roughly 80% of their time to incident triage. The rise of microservices has led to an exponential increase in codebase complexity. Managing and monitoring numerous microservice endpoints translates to a significant number of checkpoints and alerts. Consequently, outages can trigger a multitude of incidents, overwhelming engineering teams with operational tasks.
Automated and executable runbooks empower teams to establish auto-mitigation or remediation processes to address incidents. These runbooks should be triggered by events or logs, generating incidents for engineers only when necessary.
Runbooks can be broadly categorized as:
This blog post focuses on automated runbooks and explores some automation tools.
Automated runbooks allow you to automate time-consuming and repetitive tasks. You can leverage them to automate various tasks across one or more servers.
Here are some examples where automated runbooks can potentially save the day:
If you encounter VMs in a hung state or unable to serve traffic/requests, you can establish a quick-fix runbook to execute on the active incident to mitigate the issue.
Runbook Automation Tools
Here are a few popular runbook automation tools:
For instance, you can create a PowerShell Runbook to restart web application servers. This PowerShell runbook can be scheduled as per your requirements and can also be triggered from webhooks or by a schedule.
Here’s a summary of Rundeck’s features:
* Supports multi-step workflows
* Enables distributed command execution
* Offers job execution through ad-hoc requests or scheduling
* Provides a graphical web console for job execution and commands
* Includes a command-line interface (CLI) tool with a web API for operation from code
* Logs all command or job execution history for auditing purposes
* Integrates with various tools through several methods:
* Rundeck plugins developed in Java or shell script and installed on the Rundeck server
* External services utilized by a Rundeck plugin or the Rundeck core
* External plugins installed in another tool that interacts with Rundeck via its API
Ansible boasts the following features:
* Agentless: Unlike tools like Puppet or Chef, Ansible doesn't require any software or client/agent to manage your nodes.
* Python Supported: Built on Python, Ansible offers a multitude of Python features and modules. Installing Ansible often leads to automatic installation of Python on your servers.
* Secure SSH: Ansible utilizes secure shell (SSH) to connect to servers and execute operations. SSH is a password-less network authentication protocol, making Ansible both fast and secure compared to other options.
* Push Architecture: Ansible follows a push-based architecture for configuration deployment. Whenever you want to push a configuration, simply update the playbook and push it. Ansible takes care of the rest. In essence, the central server manages all configurations and pushes them to the designated target servers.
* YAML Playbooks: Ansible playbooks are written in YAML and define your configuration declaratively.
Here’s an example: Imagine your Squadcast dashboard indicates your web application servers are consuming a high amount of resources, potentially due to high CPU usage or heavy traffic. To mitigate this, you can create an automation that checks if resource utilization on web application servers has increased and surpassed a specific threshold (e.g., 65%). To achieve this, you’d create a runbook in Squadcast and schedule it to execute on incident tickets automatically.
Runbooks Supported by Squadcast Runbooks include:
* Shell script
* Lua script
* Python3 script
* NodeJS script
* Ansible configuration
Here are some best practices to consider when creating runbooks:
A runbook essentially functions as a collection of procedures for addressing common issues. They can significantly enhance your team’s efficiency in dealing with these situations. Here are some general steps to consider while writing a runbook:
A runbook should encompass the following elements:
Store runbooks in a central location where everyone who needs them can easily access them. Regularly review and update your runbooks to guarantee they remain current.
A runbook is a predefined set of technical steps, procedures, or documentation typically executed manually by a systems engineer. A runbook can encompass information related to application deployment, monitoring, and maintenance. On the other hand, SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) are descriptions of the steps required to complete specific activities or tasks. They are used to ensure that industry rules and regulations are adhered to within an organization.
A runbook is a step-by-step procedure that helps ensure the technical aspects of an organization’s systems function smoothly. A playbook is more general, outlining an organization’s approach to a task and the responsibilities of its workers. While both a runbook and a playbook include information on technical aspects, a playbook will likely delve deeper into the cultural, compliance, or user experience aspects of a task.
By implementing a strategic combination of automation and process management, you can significantly enhance incident remediation procedures and ensure runbooks are updated in a timely manner. This guarantees that when an incident occurs in the future, the documentation is up-to-date and readily available to the right person at the right time.
Squadcast is an popular Pagerduty Alternatives Incident Management tool that’s purpose-built for SRE. Get rid of unwanted alerts, receive relevant notifications and integrate with popular ChatOps tools. Work in collaboration using virtual incident war rooms and use automation to eliminate toil.
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