Runbook Template: Best Practices & Example
Fundamentally, a runbook is a set of instructions that — when followed precisely — result in a system producing a specific outcome or reaching a desired state. For example, a runbook can define a process to restore a network device to a working state.
As modern IT infrastructures continue to grow in complexity and scale, triaging potential incidents becomes more and more time-consuming. Runbooks help reduce mean time to resolve (MTTR) by providing engineers with a proven recovery path, and automation helps scale the benefits. A platform-agnostic runbook template provides process stability and reliability, and an automation strategy can provide the confidence and repeatability needed to recover quickly.
This article will deep dive into runbook templates and help you to provide some order to the chaos of a potential disaster scenario.
There are some basic details you should include in a well-structured runbook template. The goal is to be complete but concise. That means a runbook should provide readers with all the detail and context needed to complete the task but not overwhelm them or overload the document with unnecessary details that can become confusing.
