What Christmas teaches us about reliability
Silent nights
It’s Christmas Eve - a time for joy, family, and the comforting hum of silent nights. For most, it’s a moment to relax and celebrate. But for many on-call engineers and SREs, the reality can be very different: pager alerts, missed dinners, and troubleshooting cascading failures that refuse to take a holiday.
If you’ve ever spent a Christmas evening in a server room or fielded an alert while unwrapping gifts, you’re not alone. I’ve been there too—missing moments that matter because systems demanded my attention.
It got me thinking: What does Christmas teach us about reliability?
1. The Value of Preparation
Think about what it takes to create a magical Christmas-coordinating meals, buying gifts, and planning travel. The smoother it looks, the more preparation went into it. Reliability engineering is no different.
Silent nights in our systems don’t happen by chance. They’re the result of:
Clear SLOs (Service Level Objectives): Setting measurable goals so teams know what’s critical and what can wait.
Observability Tools: Leveraging standards like OpenTelemetry to monitor systems effectively and eliminate blind spots.
Automation: Automating repetitive tasks so human effort is saved for creative and critical work.
Preparation isn’t glamorous, but it’s what lets SREs sleep peacefully while systems hum along.
“The best incidents are the ones that never happen, thanks to preparation.”
2. The Importance of Staying Calm Under Pressure
Christmas is magical, but let’s be honest - it’s not always calm. A forgotten gift, a burnt turkey, or delayed flights can turn the day upside down. The key to salvaging the holiday? Staying calm and working through the problem methodically.
Incident management is no different.
When alerts come in, panic is the worst enemy.
Sticking to well-defined playbooks, escalating when necessary, and keeping communication clear makes all the difference.
Leveraging AI to identify root causes quickly can help take the guesswork out of high-pressure situations.
The systems that survive aren’t just well-built—they’re managed by teams who stay composed when the stakes are high.
3. The Human Side of Reliability
Let’s face it: behind every reliable system is a person - or a team - working tirelessly to keep it running. On-call engineers, incident commanders, and SREs are often the unsung heroes, sacrificing their time (and sometimes their sleep) to ensure others enjoy seamless experiences.
The holiday season makes this sacrifice even harder. Nobody wants to miss dinner with loved ones or the chance to watch their kids unwrap gifts. But how do we change this?
Smarter Alerting: Reduce noise by tying alerts to SLOs. Not everything needs an engineer’s attention.
AI-Powered Insights: Automate root cause analysis to cut down incident resolution times and let teams focus on what matters.
Better Handoffs: Share clear, concise updates with on-call teammates to ensure smooth transitions.
Reliability is as much about taking care of your people as it is about keeping systems running.
4. Lessons from Resilience
At its core, Christmas is about resilience: finding joy despite the chaos and sharing hope even in challenging times. That same resilience is what we build into our systems—anticipating failures, designing for recovery, and ensuring users experience reliability even when things go wrong.
I’ll never forget a particular Christmas outage years ago. A cascade failure knocked out critical services, and we spent hours tracing logs, correlating metrics, and trying to piece together the root cause. That experience reinforced the importance of being proactive:
Designing for failure.
Investing in observability tools that highlight root causes, not just symptoms.
Conducting blameless postmortems to ensure every incident teaches us something.
Today, systems are more complex than ever, but the lessons remain the same: resilience comes from preparation, teamwork, and tools that make incidents easier to manage.
This Christmas, Aim for Silent Nights
Reliability engineering isn’t just about keeping systems up—it’s about keeping lives running.
This Christmas, let’s aim for more silent nights—not because nothing is happening, but because we’ve built systems resilient enough to handle anything without constant intervention.
To all the fellow SREs, on-call engineers, and incident managers: thank you for what you do. You keep the digital world alive—whether it’s ensuring holiday shopping runs smoothly, streaming services stay uninterrupted, or messages to loved ones get delivered on time.
Here’s wishing you a peaceful, resilient holiday season, filled with moments that truly matter—like buying gifts, sharing meals, and spending time with loved ones. Your work makes it all possible. 🎄
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