On-Call Practices & Runbooks Flashcards
7 cards from real SRE practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 7 On-Call Practices & Runbooks flashcards as text
What is the recommended maximum sustainable on-call burden according to Google SRE best practices?
Answer: No more than 25% of work hours spent on operational work
Google SRE guidelines recommend limiting operational work including on-call to no more than 25% of an engineer's time to preserve capacity for engineering work.
Which runbook section helps an on-call engineer determine whether an alert represents a real user-impacting issue?
Answer: Impact assessment / severity criteria
Impact assessment sections define thresholds and signals that distinguish genuine user impact from benign anomalies, guiding severity classification.
An on-call rotation has only two engineers sharing duty. What is the primary risk?
Answer: Burnout due to insufficient rotation depth
Two-person rotations mean each engineer is on-call 50% of the time, which leads to fatigue and burnout without adequate relief.
What is a 'war room' in the context of incident response?
Answer: A physical or virtual space where all responders coordinate during a major incident
A war room is a centralized coordination space (physical or virtual, such as a dedicated chat channel) where incident responders collaborate in real time.
Which of the following is a key characteristic of a well-structured runbook step?
Answer: It is actionable, specific, and includes expected outcomes
Good runbook steps are written so an on-call engineer can execute them confidently, with clear actions and expected results to verify success.
What is the role of an Incident Commander (IC) during a major outage?
Answer: To coordinate responders, manage communications, and make prioritization decisions
The Incident Commander coordinates the response, delegates tasks to specialists, and manages stakeholder communications without necessarily doing hands-on technical work.
Why should runbooks avoid using vague language like 'check if the service looks healthy'?
Answer: Vague steps create ambiguity, leading to inconsistent actions under pressure
Ambiguous runbook language forces on-call engineers to interpret instructions during high-stress incidents, increasing the chance of error or delay.