🚨 DevOps Incident Response AI Coach

DevOps Engineer

Master DevOps incident response coding challenges with our AI-powered real-time coach. Get instant guidance on automation scripts, monitoring solutions, alerting systems, and incident management tools that demonstrate your operational expertise.

Incident Response Interview Topics

Our AI coach helps you master these critical DevOps incident response concepts

🚨

Alerting & Monitoring

Design monitoring systems, create effective alerts, implement SLIs/SLOs, and build dashboards using tools like Prometheus, Grafana, and Datadog.

🤖

Automation Scripts

Write automation scripts for incident response, including self-healing systems, runbook automation, and emergency deployment rollbacks.

🔧

Troubleshooting Tools

Build diagnostic tools, log analysis scripts, performance profiling utilities, and system health checkers for rapid issue identification.

📊

Observability

Implement comprehensive observability through metrics, logs, and traces using tools like OpenTelemetry, Jaeger, and ELK stack.

âš¡

Recovery Procedures

Code disaster recovery procedures, backup automation, database failover scripts, and service restoration workflows.

📚

Post-Incident Analysis

Develop tools for incident post-mortems, automated report generation, and continuous improvement of response procedures.

DevOps Incident Response Challenge

Challenge: Build an automated incident response system
#!/bin/bash
# Interviewer: "Design a script that automatically detects and responds to high CPU usage incidents"

# Requirements:
# 1. Monitor CPU usage every 30 seconds
# 2. Alert when CPU > 80% for 2 consecutive checks
# 3. Automatically attempt remediation
# 4. Log all actions and send notifications

Approach: Build a comprehensive monitoring and response system

Key Concepts: System monitoring, automated response, alerting, logging

Implementation:

#!/bin/bash

# incident_response.sh - Automated CPU monitoring and incident response

set -euo pipefail

# Configuration
readonly CPU_THRESHOLD=80
readonly CHECK_INTERVAL=30
readonly CONSECUTIVE_CHECKS=2
readonly LOG_FILE="/var/log/incident_response.log"
readonly ALERT_WEBHOOK="https://hooks.slack.com/services/YOUR/WEBHOOK/URL"

# Global variables
consecutive_high_cpu=0
incident_active=false
incident_id=""

# Logging function
log() {
    local level="$1"
    local message="$2"
    local timestamp=$(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
    echo "[$timestamp] [$level] $message" | tee -a "$LOG_FILE"
}

# Get current CPU usage
get_cpu_usage() {
    # Get CPU usage as percentage (100 - idle)
    top -bn1 | grep "Cpu(s)" | awk '{print $2}' | awk -F'%' '{print $1}'
}

# Send alert notification
send_alert() {
    local severity="$1"
    local message="$2"
    local color=""
    
    case "$severity" in
        "critical") color="danger" ;;
        "warning") color="warning" ;;
        "resolved") color="good" ;;
    esac
    
    # Send to Slack webhook
    curl -X POST -H 'Content-type: application/json' \
        --data "{
            \"attachments\": [{
                \"color\": \"$color\",
                \"title\": \"[$severity] CPU Incident\",
                \"text\": \"$message\",
                \"fields\": [{
                    \"title\": \"Host\",
                    \"value\": \"$(hostname)\",
                    \"short\": true
                }, {
                    \"title\": \"Time\",
                    \"value\": \"$(date)\",
                    \"short\": true
                }]
            }]
        }" "$ALERT_WEBHOOK" 2>/dev/null || log "ERROR" "Failed to send alert"
}

# Automated remediation attempts
attempt_remediation() {
    local incident_id="$1"
    log "INFO" "Starting automated remediation for incident $incident_id"
    
    # 1. Identify top CPU consuming processes
    local top_processes=$(ps aux --sort=-%cpu | head -10)
    log "INFO" "Top CPU processes: $top_processes"
    
    # 2. Check for known problematic processes and restart services
    if pgrep -f "runaway_process" > /dev/null; then
        log "WARNING" "Detected runaway_process, attempting restart"
        sudo systemctl restart runaway_service || log "ERROR" "Failed to restart runaway_service"
    fi
    
    # 3. Clear temporary files and caches
    log "INFO" "Clearing system caches"
    sudo sync && echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches > /dev/null
    
    # 4. Check disk space (high disk usage can cause CPU spikes)
    local disk_usage=$(df / | awk 'NR==2 {print $5}' | sed 's/%//')
    if [ "$disk_usage" -gt 90 ]; then
        log "WARNING" "High disk usage detected: ${disk_usage}%"
        # Clean old logs
        find /var/log -name "*.log" -mtime +7 -delete 2>/dev/null || true
    fi
    
    # 5. Restart monitoring agents if they're consuming too much CPU
    if pgrep -f "monitoring_agent" > /dev/null; then
        local agent_cpu=$(ps -C monitoring_agent -o %cpu --no-headers | awk '{sum+=$1} END {print sum}')
        if (( $(echo "$agent_cpu > 20" | bc -l) )); then
            log "WARNING" "Monitoring agent using high CPU, restarting"
            sudo systemctl restart monitoring_agent
        fi
    fi
    
    log "INFO" "Remediation attempts completed for incident $incident_id"
}

# Generate incident ID
generate_incident_id() {
    echo "INC-$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)-$(hostname -s)"
}

# Main monitoring loop
monitor_cpu() {
    log "INFO" "Starting CPU monitoring (threshold: ${CPU_THRESHOLD}%, checks: ${CONSECUTIVE_CHECKS})"
    
    while true; do
        local current_cpu
        current_cpu=$(get_cpu_usage)
        
        # Remove any decimal points for comparison
        current_cpu=${current_cpu%.*}
        
        log "DEBUG" "Current CPU usage: ${current_cpu}%"
        
        if [ "$current_cpu" -gt "$CPU_THRESHOLD" ]; then
            ((consecutive_high_cpu++))
            log "WARNING" "High CPU detected: ${current_cpu}% (${consecutive_high_cpu}/${CONSECUTIVE_CHECKS})"
            
            if [ "$consecutive_high_cpu" -ge "$CONSECUTIVE_CHECKS" ] && [ "$incident_active" = false ]; then
                # Start new incident
                incident_id=$(generate_incident_id)
                incident_active=true
                
                log "CRITICAL" "CPU incident triggered: $incident_id (CPU: ${current_cpu}%)"
                send_alert "critical" "High CPU usage detected: ${current_cpu}% for ${CONSECUTIVE_CHECKS} consecutive checks. Incident ID: $incident_id"
                
                # Attempt automated remediation
                attempt_remediation "$incident_id"
            fi
        else
            if [ "$incident_active" = true ]; then
                # Incident resolved
                log "INFO" "CPU incident resolved: $incident_id (CPU: ${current_cpu}%)"
                send_alert "resolved" "CPU usage normalized: ${current_cpu}%. Incident $incident_id resolved."
                incident_active=false
                incident_id=""
            fi
            consecutive_high_cpu=0
        fi
        
        sleep "$CHECK_INTERVAL"
    done
}

# Signal handlers for graceful shutdown
cleanup() {
    log "INFO" "Shutting down CPU monitoring"
    exit 0
}

trap cleanup SIGINT SIGTERM

# Ensure log directory exists
mkdir -p "$(dirname "$LOG_FILE")"

# Check dependencies
command -v bc >/dev/null 2>&1 || { log "ERROR" "bc is required but not installed"; exit 1; }
command -v curl >/dev/null 2>&1 || { log "ERROR" "curl is required but not installed"; exit 1; }

# Start monitoring
log "INFO" "=== CPU Incident Response System Starting ==="
monitor_cpu

Key Points to Explain:

  • Comprehensive monitoring with configurable thresholds and timeouts
  • Automated remediation attempts before escalating to human operators
  • Structured logging for post-incident analysis and debugging
  • External alerting integration (Slack, PagerDuty, etc.)
  • Graceful error handling and dependency checking
  • Incident tracking with unique IDs for correlation across systems

🚨 Real-World Scenarios

Practice with realistic incident response challenges including system outages, performance degradation, security breaches, and capacity issues with AI-guided solutions.

🤖 Automation Expertise

Learn to build robust automation scripts for incident detection, response workflows, self-healing systems, and runbook automation that reduces mean time to recovery.

📊 Monitoring & Observability

Master monitoring system design, alerting strategies, SLI/SLO implementation, and observability practices using industry-standard tools and frameworks.

🔧 Troubleshooting Skills

Develop systematic troubleshooting approaches, diagnostic tool creation, log analysis techniques, and performance optimization strategies for complex distributed systems.

📚 Best Practices

Learn incident management best practices, post-mortem processes, blameless culture implementation, and continuous improvement methodologies for operational excellence.

âš¡ Quick Response

Master rapid incident response techniques, effective communication during outages, escalation procedures, and stress management for high-pressure situations.

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