USENIX Courses

Evolution of Observability Tools at Pinterest

Explore Pinterest's journey in scaling observability tools, from metrics to log search and distributed tracing, as the company grew from startup to web-scale platform.

• YouTube
• 42 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk

Are We All on the Same Page? Let's Fix That

Explore Adaptive Paging, an innovative alert handler that uses tracing and heuristics to identify and notify the team closest to the problem, reducing alert fatigue in complex distributed systems.

• YouTube
• 39 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk

Tracing Real-Time Distributed Systems

Exploring distributed tracing in real-time data streaming systems, focusing on challenges and solutions for trading platforms, including session tracking, data flow management, and storage optimization.

• YouTube
• 41 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk

Zero Touch Prod - Towards Safer and More Secure Production Environments

Explore principles and tools for safer production environments through automation, safe proxies, and audited break-glass, reducing human errors and insider threats in system operations.

• YouTube
• 39 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk

All of Our ML Ideas Are Bad - and We Should Feel Bad

Explores limitations of Machine Learning in production engineering, debunking common misconceptions and discussing potential feasible applications for SREs.

• YouTube
• 39 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk

How to SRE When Everything's Already on Fire

Learn how Squarespace's team adopted SRE practices to transform their unreliable logging platform into a trusted system with 99.9% uptime, sharing valuable insights and strategies for improving service reliability.

• YouTube
• 40 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk

A Systems Approach to Safety and Cybersecurity

Explore systems thinking for safety and cybersecurity, integrating approaches to manage emergent properties and control problems in complex systems.

• YouTube
• 46 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk

Refining Systems Data without Losing Fidelity

Explore strategies for efficient systems data management, including sampling and aggregation techniques, to maintain crucial information while reducing data volume and costs.

• YouTube
• 35 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk

How to Do SRE When You Have No SRE

Practical strategies for implementing Site Reliability Engineering principles in resource-constrained environments, focusing on gradual improvements and stress reduction for engineering teams.

• YouTube
• 28 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk

How Stripe Invests in Technical Infrastructure

Explore Stripe's approach to prioritizing technical infrastructure investments, balancing firefighting and innovation, and enabling long-term success through strategic decision-making and resource allocation.

• YouTube
• 43 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk

SLOs for Data-Intensive Services

Explore the journey of defining effective SLOs for data-intensive services, focusing on search engines. Learn about monitoring processes, consistency, and automated mitigation strategies for complex systems.

• YouTube
• 24 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk

Deploying SRE Training Best Practices to Production - How We SRE'ed Our SRE Education Program

Explore Google's SRE training program, featuring hands-on exercises in a safe environment. Learn how SRE principles were applied to improve the curriculum, minimize toil, and enhance reliability through automation and monitoring.

• YouTube
• 42 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk

Advanced Napkin Math - Estimating System Performance from First Principles

Learn to quickly estimate system performance using base rates and napkin math, enabling informed decision-making in technical discussions and design processes without building systems first.

• YouTube
• 41 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk

Control Theory for SRE

Learn to create a PID controller for autoscaling Kubernetes deployments, ensuring smooth scaling based on custom targets. Explore control theory principles and their application in SRE practices.

• YouTube
• 26 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk

My Life as a Solo SRE

Transforming engineering culture: One SRE's journey from chaos to improved reliability, featuring practical tips on implementing SLIs, reducing incident response times, and fostering organizational change.

• YouTube
• 26 minutes
• On-Demand
• Conference Talk