September 2023 Summaries

Improving system reliability can be complex due to the intertwined nature of infrastructure components, making it challenging to predict failures and decide where to begin Chaos Engineering efforts. Steadybit introduces the Landscape Explorer, a tool designed to assist in navigating Chaos Engineering by automatically discovering infrastructure components, known as targets, and their attributes, which can then be used to plan and execute experiments. By visualizing these components, users can identify critical insights, such as which deployments span multiple availability zones or which infrastructure elements provide numerous API endpoints, allowing for targeted Chaos Engineering experiments. Additionally, business criticality is assessed through automatically discovered labels, aiding in prioritizing components that require high availability. The tool's ability to customize views and filter data enhances the precision of experiments, ensuring they are conducted efficiently and effectively. Steadybit's extensible framework allows for the integration of custom attributes, facilitating a deeper and more tailored exploration of system reliability, with plans for further enhancements based on user feedback and open-source contributions.

Experiment Schedules is a newly introduced feature designed to streamline experimental workflows by allowing users to schedule experiments with both simplicity and flexibility, addressing the need for reduced manual intervention and enhancing productivity. It offers two primary options: "Once" for single occurrences suited for ad-hoc tests and time-specific experiments, and "Recurrently" for repeated tasks using cron expressions, ideal for daily checks and weekly maintenance. Developed from community feedback, this feature aims to alleviate concerns about automation by ensuring precise timing and isolation protocols to prevent unintended interactions, while empowering users to focus on early risk identification and automation, setting the stage for future advancements.