Every year as it comes towards the end of the year there is always a major amount of prep for the Holidays. Getting ready for Black Friday and planning for more people to be out of the office than usual. These are some of the items that I feel are missed or always just need to be re-visited.
Alerts
Make sure your alerts still make sense. Ensure that something that is going to wake someone up in the middle of the night is actually that critical. This allows for focusing on true issues while prioritizing the other items appropriately during regular business hours.
Smoke Tests
If you run regular tests to ensure things are running correctly. Ensure that documentation about them is up to date and that everyone on the team understands what they are doing, why they exist, and how to manually do it to ensure things are working.
Permissions
Check that everyone on the team has the correct permissions. Even if they have in the past there have been plenty of times that something happened and a role got revoked somehow. Overall this shouldn’t take long and reduces the potential for a major headache in the middle of the process.
Customer Expectations
If you are a DevOps person who works with multiple teams. Ensure that expectations are set with them on what support will look like during the Holidays. Whatever that will be just taking some time to ensure that they are in the loop on everything will make everything a little smoother.
Overall
These are just some of the overall items that I have always found make for an easier Holiday On-Call Experience for everyone. What are some things that you always do before the Holidays?