Automation
Automation adds value by removing toil:
- Consistency, and reduced margin for error.
- Providing a platform which can be applied to get the same benefits elsewhere.
- Faster repairs, by reducing the MTTR.
- Faster action, e.g. for failing over to an alternative region in response to a regional connectivity problem.
- Time saving, freeing up humans to do more valuable work.
Use cases
- Account creation;
- Cluster turnup and turndown;
- Software or hardware preparation and decommissioning;
- Rollouts of new versions;
- Runtime configuration changes; and
- Changes to dependencies.
Automation classes
- No automation, e.g. manual regional failover of a database.
- Externally maintained system-specific automation, e.g. an SRE has a shellscript in their home directory.
- Externally maintained generic automation, e.g. the SRE adds database support to a generic failover script used elsewhere.
- Internally maintained system-specific automation, e.g. the database ships with its own failover script.
- Systems that don't need any automation, e.g. the database engine is self-healing and addresses the problem without human intervention.
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