Company
Date Published
Author
Andreas Grabner
Word count
1359
Language
American English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is a critical discipline focusing on building reliable systems, but the concept of "self-healing" in this context can be misleading, as it's more about automating remediation actions than systems independently healing themselves. The author suggests using terms like Smart- or Auto-Remediation and emphasizes that self-healing should not be limited to operations in production but should also involve proactive measures to prevent issues from reaching production, a concept they call "Shift-Left SRE." This involves integrating quality gate checks into the CI/CD pipeline to detect and mitigate potential problems in pre-production environments, thereby enhancing system resilience. Using tools like Dynatrace, auto-remediation as code can be implemented, where automated scripts focus on fixing root causes rather than symptoms, creating a more efficient incident response. The ultimate goal is to establish an "Unbreakable Delivery Pipeline" by combining automated validation and deployment of remediation scripts, thus minimizing production issues and fostering collaboration between operations and engineering teams for better system resilience.