Getting Good At System Failure Analysis
summary
Failure analysis is a learnable craft: adopt a fix‑it posture, treat failures as data and opportunity, and scope problems with simple models like sequence and data‑flow diagrams and a kept working set. Use practical tools—SSH and shell loops, large shell history, Unix text processing, ag/grep—to pull logs, loop over IPs and PS, check vitals, and count HTTP codes. Read unfamiliar code to find root causes, version diagrams (mermaid/Typora), and push radical collective ownership so fixes and knowledge spread.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Start
- 1:44Systems Fail
- 3:33Attitude Matters
- 4:05Failure Feelings Framework
- 9:39Why do you care?
- 11:46Failure Hurts
- 25:36How much do you need to understand the system in order to understand the failure ?
- 26:43Use models to anchor your working set of system understanding to the failure at hand.
- 27:52A process of narrowing
- 28:35Scope Failure
- 29:26Read Code
- 29:42Don't know the language? Learn It!
- 30:04Use Models Stay Anchored
- 30:33Learning Contagious
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