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 a 'canary alert' in the context of on-call alerting strategy?
Answer: A synthetic probe alert used to validate that the alerting pipeline itself is functional
A canary alert is a deliberately triggered test alert that verifies the end-to-end alerting and paging pipeline is working correctly.
Which practice helps ensure runbooks remain accurate over time?
Answer: Requiring runbook review as part of every post-mortem and system change
Linking runbook reviews to post-mortems and change processes ensures documentation is updated when systems or failure patterns change.
An alert fires at 3 AM and the on-call engineer determines no user impact exists. What is the appropriate action?
Answer: Acknowledge, document the lack of impact, and create a ticket to tune the alert
Non-impacting alerts should be acknowledged and documented, then a follow-up ticket created to reduce noise — silencing without investigation risks missing real issues.
What is 'toil' in SRE terminology as it relates to on-call work?
Answer: Repetitive, manual, and automatable operational work that scales with service growth
Toil is repetitive manual work tied to running a production service that provides no enduring value and grows with the system — a primary target for automation.
Which on-call handoff practice is most effective for continuity?
Answer: A structured handoff document covering open incidents, recent changes, and known risks
A structured handoff document ensures the incoming on-call engineer is aware of ongoing issues, recent changes, and system risks without having to rediscover them.
In PagerDuty or OpsGenie, what is an 'override' typically used for?
Answer: Temporarily assigning on-call duty to a different engineer for a defined time window
An override temporarily substitutes one engineer for another in the schedule, used for vacations, sick days, or planned absences without changing the permanent rotation.
What is the purpose of a 'blameless post-mortem' in on-call culture?
Answer: To analyze what went wrong and improve systems without attributing personal fault
Blameless post-mortems focus on systemic causes and process improvements rather than individual blame, fostering a culture where engineers report problems honestly.