USENIX Courses

Turning an Incident Report into a Design Issue with TLA+

Explore how modeling-driven techniques and TLA+ can enhance postmortem analysis, uncover root causes, and improve system design in distributed database architectures.

• YouTube
• 31 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Logs Told Us It Was DNS, It Looked like DNS, It Had to Be DNS, It Wasn't DNS

Unraveling a complex Kubernetes incident: from DNS suspicions to kernel-level insights, culminating in a surprising three-line code fix. Learn debugging techniques and unexpected system behaviors.

• YouTube
• 38 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

An Organizational Response to Incidents - Designing for Smooth Coordination

Strategies for effective incident response coordination, focusing on follower roles and organizational preconditions. Insights to improve communication and collaboration during software outages.

• YouTube
• 46 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

The Endgame of SRE

Explore sociotechnical engineering strategies for SREs to impact reliability beyond infrastructure, addressing team struggles, burnout, and priorities to enhance overall system performance.

• YouTube
• 33 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Not All Minutes Are Equal - The Secret Behind SLO Adoption Failure

Uncover the truth behind SLO adoption failures, learn to calculate and prove their value, and understand key differences in measurement methods for better system reliability insights.

• YouTube
• 29 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Handover Communications in Software Operations - Findings from the Field

Explores attributes affecting engineer confidence in handover communications for software operations, based on research and interviews. Highlights importance of effective information transfer in various scenarios.

• YouTube
• 30 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Epic Incidents of History - The 1979 NORAD Nuclear Near Miss

Explore the 1979 NORAD nuclear near-miss incident, its causes, and implications for modern distributed systems maintenance and operation. Learn from this historical event to improve current practices.

• YouTube
• 32 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Incident Commanders to Incident Analysts - How We Got Here

Explore the transition from incident management to incident analysis, highlighting the distinct skills required and the value of post-incident learning for driving meaningful organizational change.

• YouTube
• 26 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Watering the Roots of Resilience - Learning from Failure with Decision Trees

Explore how SREs can align mental models with system reality using resilience stress testing and decision trees. Learn practical tools for documenting, visualizing, and improving complex software systems.

• YouTube
• 41 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Confessions of an SRE Manager

Insights into SRE management: priorities, decision-making, and career advancement for ICs. Learn to recognize effective leadership and navigate the SRE management landscape.

• YouTube
• 31 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Building a Diverse SRE Talent Pipeline

Discover how Google and Major League Hacking collaborate to create diverse SRE talent through the SRE Fellowship, offering underrepresented groups immersive training and career opportunities in site reliability engineering.

• YouTube
• 31 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Cognitive Apprenticeship in Practice with Alert Triage Hour of Power

Learn effective alert triage through guided experience in real-world scenarios. Discover how "Alert Triage Hour of Power" fosters camaraderie and system understanding in production environments.

• YouTube
• 32 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

SRE's Critical Role in the COVID-19 Pandemic Response in Government

Explore how SREs in government navigated regulatory constraints to rapidly deploy critical software services during the COVID-19 pandemic, showcasing their adaptability and incident response skills.

• YouTube
• 37 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

We're Still Down - A Metastable Failure Tale

Explore a CDN's metastable failure, design improvements, and unconventional recovery methods. Learn strategies to prevent and address similar incidents in distributed systems.

• YouTube
• 25 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk

Exploring Disconnects between Reliability Practitioners and Management

Insights into perception gaps between reliability practitioners and management based on The SRE Report, offering strategies to bridge differences and improve organizational alignment.

• YouTube
• 34 minutes
• Self-Paced
• Conference Talk