21 Dec 2021
Your runbooks need to exist outside your normal everyday systems. It is fine to put then into Confluence. It makes for a good easy reference point. However, in order for you runbooks to be available, meaning usable when needed, there needs to an offline copy as well.
You will be ever thankful for that zipped up batch of markdown files that is your runbook library when all things go down. I’ve been around when the system housing the runbooks is down. Now what? You are working from memory. If you did not write the runbooks then you are working from someone else’s memory. If is never a good time to verbally acknowledge you can do nothing until another piece of software starts running again.
You know my recommendation is to start with a structured document source format. Experience has shown that Yaml is best. Next, build them into markdown views and take those artifacts and zip them up. Put them wherever you want but make sure you get a copy for yourself. Emailing a zip file to yourself after a successful build is the base level activity at this point. Heck, send it to a distribution list and let the team share the wealth. Storing them in another accessible location is also a good idea.
Your goal is to make the runbooks available when you need them. You will need them. When you do other elements of your infrastructure will be failing as well. In this business you cannot predict when that will happen or what will be involved. Keep those runbooks close, local, and available.
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