Runbooks - Structure

Creating clear, actionable runbooks for operational tasks, maintenance, and troubleshooting.

What is a Runbook?

A runbook is step-by-step documentation for operational tasks:

• Troubleshooting - Diagnosing and fixing issues
• Incident Response - Handling production incidents
• Maintenance - Routine operational tasks
• On-Call - Reference for on-call engineers

Basic Runbook Structure

Minimum Viable Runbook

# Service Name: Task/Issue

## Overview
Brief description of what this runbook covers.

## Prerequisites
- Required access/permissions
- Tools needed
- Knowledge required

## Steps

### 1. First Step
Detailed instructions for first action.

### 2. Second Step
Detailed instructions for second action.

## Validation
How to verify the task was completed successfully.

## Rollback (if applicable)
How to undo the changes if needed.

Comprehensive Runbook Template

# [Service]: [Task/Issue Title]

**Last Updated:** 2025-01-15
**Owner:** Platform Team
**Severity:** High/Medium/Low
**Estimated Time:** 15 minutes

## Overview

Brief description of the problem or task this runbook addresses.

## When to Use This Runbook

- Alert fired: `high_cpu_usage`
- Customer report: slow response times
- Scheduled maintenance window

## Prerequisites

- [ ] VPN access to production network
- [ ] AWS console access (read/write)
- [ ] kubectl configured for production cluster
- [ ] Slack access to #incidents channel

## Context

### Architecture Overview
Brief explanation of relevant system architecture.

### Common Causes
- Database connection pool exhaustion
- Memory leaks in worker processes
- Third-party API rate limiting

## Diagnosis Steps

### 1. Check System Health

```bash
# Check pod status
kubectl get pods -n production

# Expected output: All pods Running

Decision Point: If pods are CrashLooping, proceed to step 2. Otherwise, skip to step 3.

2. Check Application Logs

# View recent logs
kubectl logs -n production deployment/api-server --tail=100

Look for:

• Error messages containing "connection refused"
• Stack traces
• Repeated warnings

3. Check Database Performance

# Connect to RDS metrics
aws cloudwatch get-metric-statistics \
  --namespace AWS/RDS \
  --metric-name DatabaseConnections \
  --dimensions Name=DBInstanceIdentifier,Value=prod-db

Resolution Steps

Option A: Restart Services (Quick Fix)

1. Drain pod gracefully:

   kubectl drain pod/api-server-abc123 --ignore-daemonsets
   

2. Verify new pod is healthy:

   kubectl get pods -n production | grep api-server
   

3. Monitor for 5 minutes: Check Datadog dashboard for error rates.

Option B: Scale Resources (Long-term Fix)

1. Increase database connection pool:

   # Edit configmap
   kubectl edit configmap app-config -n production
   
   # Change: DB_POOL_SIZE: "10"
   # To: DB_POOL_SIZE: "20"
   

2. Restart deployment:

   kubectl rollout restart deployment/api-server -n production
   

3. Monitor rollout:

   kubectl rollout status deployment/api-server -n production
   

Validation

• All pods in Running state: kubectl get pods -n production
• Error rate < 1%: Check Datadog dashboard
• Response time < 200ms p95: Check Datadog dashboard
• No alerts firing: Check PagerDuty

Rollback

If the fix causes issues:

# Rollback to previous version
kubectl rollout undo deployment/api-server -n production

# Verify rollback
kubectl rollout status deployment/api-server -n production

Follow-up Actions

• Create post-mortem ticket: JIRA-1234
• Update monitoring alerts if needed
• Schedule post-incident review
• Document learnings in team wiki

Related Runbooks

• Database Connection Troubleshooting
• Pod Restart Procedures
• Incident Response Guide

Contact Information

• Primary On-Call: Check PagerDuty schedule
• Escalation: Platform Team Lead
• Slack Channel: #platform-incidents

Revision History

Date	Author	Changes
2025-01-15	Alice	Added validation steps
2025-01-10	Bob	Initial version

## Runbook Organization

### Directory Structure

runbooks/ ├── README.md # Index of all runbooks ├── templates/ │ ├── troubleshooting.md # Template for troubleshooting │ ├── maintenance.md # Template for maintenance tasks │ └── incident-response.md # Template for incidents ├── services/ │ ├── api-gateway/ │ │ ├── high-latency.md │ │ ├── connection-errors.md │ │ └── scaling.md │ └── database/ │ ├── slow-queries.md │ └── replication-lag.md ├── infrastructure/ │ ├── kubernetes/ │ │ ├── pod-restart.md │ │ └── node-drain.md │ └── networking/ │ └── firewall-rules.md └── on-call/ ├── first-responder.md ├── escalation-guide.md └── common-alerts.md

## Best Practices

### Write for Clarity

```markdown
# Good: Clear, specific steps
## Restart the API Server

1. Check current pod status:
   ```bash
   kubectl get pods -n production -l app=api-server

1. Delete the pod (it will auto-restart):

   kubectl delete pod <pod-name> -n production
   

2. Verify new pod is running:

   kubectl get pods -n production -l app=api-server
   

   Expected: STATUS = Running

```markdown
# Bad: Vague, assumes knowledge
## Fix API Issues

1. Restart the thing
2. Check if it works
3. If not, try something else

Include Decision Trees

## Diagnosis

1. Check if service is responding:
   ```bash
   curl -f https://api.example.com/health

If succeeds: Service is up. Check application logs (Step 3). If fails: Service is down. Check pod status (Step 2).

1. Check pod status:

   kubectl get pods -n production
   

   If CrashLooping: Check logs for errors (Step 4). If Pending: Check node resources (Step 5). If Running: Service should be up. Check DNS (Step 6).

### Provide Expected Outputs

```markdown
## Check Database Connection

```bash
psql -h prod-db.example.com -U app -c "SELECT 1"

Expected output:

 ?column?
----------
        1
(1 row)

If you see "connection refused":

• Check security groups allow traffic
• Verify database is running
• Check credentials in secrets manager

### Use Checklists

```markdown
## Pre-Deployment Checklist

- [ ] Code reviewed and approved
- [ ] Tests passing in CI
- [ ] Database migrations tested
- [ ] Rollback plan documented
- [ ] Monitoring alerts configured
- [ ] On-call engineer notified
- [ ] Deploy window scheduled

Common Patterns

Emergency Response

# EMERGENCY: Database Down

**Time-Sensitive:** Complete within 5 minutes

## Immediate Actions (Do First)

1. **Page database team:**
   Use PagerDuty incident: "Database outage"

2. **Notify stakeholders:**
   Post in #incidents: "Database is down. Investigating."

3. **Enable maintenance mode:**
   ```bash
   kubectl set env deployment/api-server MAINTENANCE_MODE=true

Investigation (While Waiting)

1. Check RDS console for instance status
2. Review CloudWatch logs for errors
3. Check recent changes in deploy history

Communication Template

Update every 10 minutes in #incidents:

[HH:MM] Database still down. Database team investigating. Impact: All API requests failing. ETA: Unknown.

### Routine Maintenance

```markdown
# Monthly Database Maintenance

**Schedule:** First Sunday of each month, 2 AM UTC
**Duration:** ~2 hours
**Downtime:** None (rolling maintenance)

## Pre-Maintenance

**1 week before:**
- [ ] Announce maintenance window in #engineering
- [ ] Create calendar event
- [ ] Prepare rollback plan

**1 day before:**
- [ ] Verify backup is recent (< 24 hours)
- [ ] Test backup restoration (staging)
- [ ] Confirm on-call coverage

## Maintenance Steps

1. **Take snapshot:**
   ```bash
   aws rds create-db-snapshot \
     --db-instance-identifier prod-db \
     --db-snapshot-identifier maintenance-$(date +%Y%m%d)

1. Apply updates: Follow RDS console update wizard

2. Monitor reboot: Watch CloudWatch metrics for 15 minutes

Post-Maintenance

• Verify all services healthy
• Post completion in #engineering
• Update maintenance log

### Knowledge Transfer

```markdown
# New Engineer Onboarding: Deploy Process

## Learning Objectives

After completing this runbook, you will:
- Understand our deployment pipeline
- Know how to deploy to staging
- Know how to rollback a bad deploy

## Step 1: Understanding the Pipeline

Our deployment flow:

GitHub → CI (GitHub Actions) → ArgoCD → Kubernetes

**Exercise:** Review a recent deploy in ArgoCD

## Step 2: Deploying to Staging

**Shadowing:** Watch a senior engineer deploy first.

1. Create feature branch
2. Open pull request
3. Wait for CI to pass
4. Merge to main
5. Watch ArgoCD sync

**Practice:** Deploy your own change to staging.

## Step 3: Deploying to Production

**Requirements before production deploy:**
- [ ] Completed 3+ staging deploys
- [ ] Reviewed with team lead
- [ ] Read incident response runbook

**Hands-on:** Pair with team lead for first production deploy.

## Certification

- [ ] Completed 5 staging deploys
- [ ] Completed 1 production deploy (supervised)
- [ ] Can explain rollback procedure

**Certified by:** _________________ Date: _______

Anti-Patterns

Don't Leave Out Context

## Bad: No context

### Fix the API

Run this command:
```bash
kubectl delete pod api-server-abc

Good: Explain why

Restart API Server

When to use: API returning 500 errors, logs show memory leak.

Why this works: Deletes pod, Kubernetes creates fresh pod with clean state.

kubectl delete pod api-server-abc

What to expect: ~30 seconds downtime while new pod starts.

### Don't Skip Validation Steps

```markdown
# Bad: No validation
## Deploy New Version

1. Update image tag
2. Apply changes
3. Done!

# Good: Include validation
## Deploy New Version

1. Update image tag in deployment.yaml
2. Apply changes:
   ```bash
   kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml

1. Verify rollout:

   kubectl rollout status deployment/api-server
   

   Wait for "successfully rolled out"

2. Check pod health:

   kubectl get pods -l app=api-server
   

   All pods should show STATUS: Running

3. Verify endpoints:

   curl https://api.example.com/health
   

   Should return 200 OK

### Don't Assume Knowledge

```markdown
# Bad: Uses jargon without explanation
## Fix Pod

Check the ingress and make sure the service mesh is working.

# Good: Explains terms
## Fix Pod Connectivity

1. **Check ingress** (the load balancer that routes traffic to pods):
   ```bash
   kubectl get ingress -n production

1. Verify service mesh (Istio, manages pod-to-pod communication):

   kubectl get pods -n istio-system
   

   All Istio control plane pods should be Running.

## Related Skills

- **troubleshooting-guides**: Creating diagnostic procedures
- **incident-response**: Handling production incidents