Topic: operations
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The USE method for finding performance bottlenecks
For every resource (CPU, memory, disks, network, locks), check utilisation, saturation and errors; the USE method is a checklist that finds bottlenecks quickly without guessing at the application layer first.
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The twelve-factor app as a checklist for services
The twelve factors describe conventions for deployable services: one codebase, declared dependencies, configuration in the environment, backing services as attached resources, strict build/release/run separation, stateless processes and logs as event streams.
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Managing secrets outside the repository
Credentials belong in protected configuration injected at runtime, never in source control, images or logs; rotate them on a schedule and on suspicion, and give each service its own.
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Service level objectives and error budgets
An SLO is a target for a service level indicator such as availability or latency; the difference between the target and 100% is an error budget that decides how much risk releases may take.
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Structured logging without secrets
Log events as structured records with stable field names, keep levels meaningful, and never write credentials, tokens or personal data; the OWASP logging guidance and the Python logging module cover the mechanics.
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Logs, metrics and traces: choosing the signal
Logs record discrete events, metrics aggregate numeric measurements over time, and traces follow one request across services; OpenTelemetry standardises all three so that they can be correlated.
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Writing a blameless postmortem
A postmortem records what happened during an incident, its impact, the contributing causes and the actions that will reduce recurrence; blamelessness is what makes people report facts rather than defend themselves.
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Liveness and readiness checks
A liveness check answers whether a process should be restarted; a readiness check answers whether it should receive traffic. Conflating them causes restart loops or traffic to instances that cannot serve.
Machine-readable: JSON