SRE Competency (Intermediate Level)

Topics covered

• define what is meant by a process-induced emergency, describe the effects of them, and outline how to respond to them
• describe common tools used for packaging and releasing services and releases
• describe how automation processes can vary
• describe the characteristics and purpose of blackbox monitoring
• describe the characteristics and purpose of whitebox monitoring
• describe the path that the evolution of automation follows
• describe the value of automation including consistency, platform, repairs, and time savings
• describe what is meant by each one of the 'three Cs' of incident management (coordinate, communicate, and control)
• describe why it is vital to keep a history of outages and mistakes and outline best practices when doing so
• describe why SREs might carry out reliability testing
• determine which factors are the root cause of a problem
• differentiate between different tools used to automate functions
• differentiate between SRE and DevOps
• differentiate between tools used for creation such as GitHub and Subversion
• list common Google SRE use cases for automation
• list standard factors that can influence software reliability
• list the core tenets of SRE
• name and describe some common SRE metrics
• name the causes and outcomes of change-induced emergencies and outline how to respond to these emergencies
• outline the fundamental emergency response principles SREs need to be familiar with and recognize the critical steps to take when a system breaks
• outline the process and purpose of logging and name the benefits of text logs
• outline what comprises a private cloud, recognize which cloud service models can be delivered in them, describe ways to use them, and distinguish the advantages and disadvantages of their use
• outline what's involved in reliability testing and describe testing techniques, such as unit, integration, system, production, stress, and rollouts entangle tests
• provide an overview of automation classes and describe the path the evolution of automation follows
• provide an overview of common pitfalls associated with troubleshooting systems
• provide an overview of planning tools such as JIRA and Pivotal Tracker
• provide an overview of Service Level Agreements
• provide an overview of Service Level Objectives
• provide an overview of Site Reliability Engineering
• provide an overview of the primary goals of a post-mortem philosophy
• provide an overview of tools used to monitor applications and infrastructure
• provide an overview of uses cases for automation
• provide an overview Service Level Indicators
• recognize how to embrace and manage risk in an environment
• recognize how to measure service risk using metrics such as time-based availability and aggregate availability
• recognize how to use PowerShell for automation tasks in Windows
• recognize the advantages and considerations when automating all the things
• recognize the benefits of performing test-induced emergencies and outline what this involves
• recognize the importance of incident response planning and the characteristics of incidence response plans
• recognize the nine principles of Site Reliability Engineering
• restate the duties of the prominent job roles involved in incident response (Incident Commander, Communications Lead, and Operations Lead) as well as those of other, supporting roles
• summarize the requirements, goals, best practices, job roles, and tools involved in managing and responding to incidents