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💼 OPS10-BP07 Automate responses to events

• ID: /frameworks/aws-well-architected/operational-excellence/operate/ops10/bp07

Description

Automating event responses is key for fast, consistent, and error-free operational handling. Create streamlined processes and use tools to automatically manage and respond to events, minimizing manual interventions and enhancing operational effectiveness.

Desired outcome

• Reduced human errors and faster resolution times through automation.
• Consistent and reliable operational event handling.
• Enhanced operational efficiency and system reliability.

Common anti-patterns

• Manual event handling leads to delays and errors.
• Automation is overlooked in repetitive, critical tasks.
• Repetitive, manual tasks lead to alert fatigue and missing critical issues.

Benefits of establishing this best practice

• Accelerated event responses, reducing system downtime.
• Reliable operations with automated and consistent event handling.

Level of risk exposed if this best practice is not established: Medium

Implementation guidance

Incorporate automation to create efficient operational workflows and minimize manual interventions.

Implementation steps

1. Identify automation opportunities: Determine repetitive tasks for automation, such as issue remediation, ticket enrichment, capacity management, scaling, deployments, and testing.

2. Identify automation prompts:

   • Assess and define specific conditions or metrics that initiate automated responses using Amazon CloudWatch alarm actions.
   • Use Amazon EventBridge to respond to events in AWS services, custom workloads, and SaaS applications.
   • Consider initiation events such as specific log entries, performance metrics thresholds, or state changes in AWS resources.

3. Implement event-driven automation:

   • Use AWS Systems Manager Automation runbooks to simplify maintenance, deployment, and remediation tasks.
   • Creating incidents in Incident Manager automatically gathers and adds details about the involved AWS resources to the incident.
   • Proactively monitor quotas using Quota Monitor for AWS.
   • Automatically adjust capacity with AWS Auto Scaling to maintain availability and performance.
   • Automate development pipelines with Amazon CodeCatalyst.
   • Smoke test or continually monitor endpoints and APIs using synthetic monitoring.

4. Perform risk mitigation through automation:

   • Implement automated security responses to swiftly address risks.
   • Use AWS Systems Manager State Manager to reduce configuration drift.
   • Remediate noncompliant resources with AWS Config Rules.

Level of effort for the implementation plan: High

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