03 Attack by Stratagem

In an era where uptime, latency, and user experience dictate the rhythm of businesses, the discipline of Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) emerges as the vanguard of digital excellence. In the chapter “Attack by Stratagem”, Sun Tzu emphasizes the importance of proactive strategy, the avoidance of prolonged warfare, understanding both the enemy and oneself, adaptability, prioritizing targets, and the value of diplomacy.

Drawing inspiration from Sun Tzu's "Attack by Stratagem," the essence of strategy in SRE becomes evident: it's not merely about responding to system failures but proactively shaping the digital environment to ensure optimal performance, resilience, and user satisfaction.

• Supremacy of Proactive Reliability: The highest form of reliability is to prevent incidents before they manifest. Just as Sun Tzu believed that the pinnacle of warfare is to attack the enemy's strategy, in SRE, the zenith of excellence lies in preemptively identifying and mitigating potential system vulnerabilities, bottlenecks, and inefficiencies. The true mastery of an SRE is not in how they react to incidents but in how they prevent them. Sun Tzu famously said, "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." In the world of SRE, this wisdom translates to preventing incidents before they occur. Through rigorous testing, monitoring, and proactive measures, many incidents can be preempted, embodying this ancient insight.

• The Cost of Reactive Approaches: Every moment spent reacting to an incident, akin to prolonged warfare, drains an organization's resources, reputation, and revenue. Prolonged system outages or persistent issues erode user trust and can have significant financial implications. During incident management, it's easy to venture down the path of troubleshooting and fixing. While this is a tempting and common human tendency, one must prioritize recovery over discovery. Simpler strategies like failover and failback should be preferred over on-the-fly fixes. A strategic SRE approach seeks to minimize these reactive engagements, ensuring systems are robust and resilient from the outset.

• Know Your Systems, Their SLOs, and Their Dependencies: Understanding both the strengths and vulnerabilities of your systems, as well as their interdependencies, is crucial for maintaining reliability. Distributed computing, by design, is intricate and not for the faint-hearted. It often lures developers with the ease of development, masking the harsh reality of runtime operations and dependencies. By having a deep knowledge of the digital terrain, SREs can anticipate challenges, design redundancies, and ensure consistent system performance.

• Adaptability in the Face of Change: The digital realm is in constant flux, with new technologies, tools, and challenges emerging regularly. A successful SRE strategy isn't static but is adaptable, allowing teams to pivot based on changing circumstances, emerging technologies, and unforeseen challenges. The most powerful tool for an SRE is reflection, and the most adept SRE is one who continues to learn. If there's one skill to prioritize when hiring SREs, it's their ability to adapt and learn.

• Prioritize and Triage: Not all systems and services are of equal importance. SREs must prioritize resources and efforts based on the criticality of services, potential impact of outages, and user needs. This strategic triage ensures that the most crucial systems receive the attention they require, minimizing overall business impact.

• Collaboration and Diplomacy:  In the interconnected world of digital services, SREs often need to collaborate with other teams, vendors, and sometimes even competitors. Building alliances, understanding third-party dependencies, and ensuring seamless communication can be as crucial as internal strategies.

Much like ancient battlefields, SRE demands foresight, strategy, and adaptability. It's not the strongest systems that survive, nor the most intelligent, but those most responsive to change. Drawing parallels with Sun Tzu's teachings not only offers a fresh perspective but also underscores the timeless nature of strategic thinking, whether in ancient battles or the digital frontiers of today.