Do We Have a Runbook?
Runbooks, what are they, and why do I need them?
In short, a runbook is a detailed set of instructions, that can help guide IT Admins, SysAdmins, Engineers and DevOps engineers (and many others depending on the Runbook Contents) through routine and critical procedures necessary for managing or troubleshooting systems, applications, or infrastructure.
The value of having your Runbooks in place and widely distributed can save you on turnaround time in a critical moment and in general keep delays down.
Are you having an issue with the Micro-service pod?
Maybe check the Runbook for that issue to see if it has been resolved before. Do you need to give a user Access to a system or tool, but you don’t know who administers said item?
How do you get those resources for your team members?
A Runbook, well documented, and well distributed, will help in these instances.
This is in general, is how I developed Runbooks for the current project that I have been working on. There came a time and a space where a need was not being filled. There were many questions about how to do a variety of tasks, with answers scattered across many departments between various members of the Team.
The information is there, it's just not documented, and more importantly not being shared, which leaves large blind spots within an organization to effectively manage itself through low-spend, high-return efforts.
Driving Runbook Creation through Identifying Asks
The process started with identifying the asks:
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What Applications, Systems, Tools, are available within the organization?
- Sauce labs, Bitrise, DataDog, AWS, Human, Lucid, Figma, etc.
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Who is the Owner/Sponsor of the individual tools and systems?
- Admins
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Who within the Org. has access and to what systems, and should they have access?
- Systems administered / permissions
Identifying the questions above helped to lay out the work that was needed from my own perspective. It began with just tracking down who knew of what we had at our disposal to use within the organization. Myself personally, I had access to a few systems and tools that were needed, but I had no idea how many there were in existence.
Finding the owner within the organization who had the most access to the most systems and tools greatly accelerated the process. After having an understanding of what resources I needed to investigate, I could then find out who actually had access and what levels of permissions to certain tools they had. I could also Identify individuals who maybe should have that access and did not.
With this process also came a review and desire to level set what users were given for their permissions when added to a system. Right sizing this also helped to ensure that security issues were tightened up. Individuals who had previously had "God" mode enabled, or Admin rights were placed into more related roles that suited their permissions needs.
This will undoubtedly create some unrest within an organization as well, due to the rights being toned down for users. The goal is to have the least level of privileges assigned, with the correct scope to the end users needs. Beyond that it's a want and not a need.
Keeping your systems well provisioned, with clearly defined roles and permissions, along with associated Runbooks will greatly improve many aspects of day-to-day operations and long term concerns.
Justin Ranly
Justin has sixteen years of experience in the nursing field, with the last ten years dedicated to procedural nursing and radiology. However, he was ready for a new challenge and wanted to become more involved in technology. After applying his skills in a software development bootcamp, he joined the Arbory team. There, he enjoys being surrounded by experts in the field and seeing the direct results of his impact. When Justin isn’t working, he enjoys traveling, attending live shows, and spending time with his family and friends.
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