Templates and Examples - The Practice of Cloud System Administration - page 479

Title:
Report Status:
Executive Summary:
List what happened, who was affected, and what are the key recommendations for pre-
vention in the future (especially any that will require budget or executive approval).
Outage Description:
A general description of the outage, from a technical perspective of what happened.
Affected users:
Who was affected.
Start Date/Time:
End Date/Time:
Duration:
Timeline:
A minute-by-minute timeline assembled from system logs, chat logs, emails, and
whatever other resources are available.
Contributing Conditions Analysis:
What were the contributing causes that led to the outage?
What went well?
A bullet list of what went well. This is a good opportunity to thank anyone who went
above and beyond expectations to help out.
What could have gone better?
A bullet list of which actions could have been taken that would have improved how fast
we were back in service, the techniques used, and so on.
Recommendations:
A bullet list of recommendations that would prevent this outage in the future. Each
should be actionable and measurable. Good example: “Monitor disk space for database
server and alert if less than 20 percent is available.” Bad example: “Improve monitoring.”
File a bug/feature request for each recommendation; list bug IDs here.
Names of people involved:
List of the people involved in the resolution of the outage.