Teams

Aim

The aim of this module is for you to complete the first step of Team configuration by adding users to your Team.

1. Find your Team

Navigate to the Teams tab on the main toolbar, you should find you that a Team has been created for you as part of the workshop pre-setup and you would have been informed of your Team Name via e-mail.

If you have found your pre-configured Team, skip Step 2. and proceed to Step 3. Configure Your Team. However, if you cannot find your allocated Team, you will need to create a new one, so proceed with Step 2. Create Team

2. Create Team

Only complete this step if you cannot find your pre-allocated Team as detailed in your workshop e-mail. Select Add Team, then enter your allocated team name, this will typically be in the format of “AttendeeID Workshop” and then save by clicking the Add Team button.

3. Configure Your Team

You now need to add other users to your team. If you are running this workshop using the Splunk provided environment, the following accounts are available for testing. If you are running this lab in your own environment, you will have been provided a list of usernames you can use in place of the table below.

These users are dummy accounts who will not receive notifications when they are on call.

Add the users to your team, using either the above list or the alternate one provided to you. The value in the Shift column can be ignored for now, but will be required for a later step.

Click Invite User button on the right hand side, then either start typing the usernames (this will filter the list), or copy and paste them into the dialogue box. Once all users are added to the list click the Add User button.

To make a team member a Team Admin, simply click the :fontawesome-regular-edit: icon in the right hand column, pick any user and make them an Admin.

Continue and also complete the Configure Rotations module.

Configure Rotations

Aim

A rotation is a recurring schedule, that consists of one or more shifts, with members who rotate through a shift.

The aim of this module is for you to configure two example Rotations, and assign Team Members to the Rotations.

Navigate to the Rotations tab on the Teams sub menu, you should have no existing Rotations so we need to create some.

The 1st Rotation you will create is for a follow the sun support pattern where the members of each shift provide cover during their normal working hours within their time zone.

The 2nd will be a Rotation used to provide escalation support by more experienced senior members of the team, based on a 24/7, 1 week shift pattern.

1. Follow the Sun Support - Business Hours

Click Add Rotation

Enter a name of “Follow the Sun Support - Business Hours” and Select Partial day from the three available shift templates.

• Enter a Shift name of “Asia”
• Time Zone set to “Asia/Tokyo”
• Each user is on duty from “Monday through Friday from 9.00am to 5.00pm”
• Handoff happens every “5 days”
• The next handoff happens - Select the next Monday using the calendar
• Click Save Rotation

You will now be prompted to add Members to this shift; add the Asia members who are Jim Halpert, Lydie Rodarte-Quayle and Marie Schrader, but only if you’re using the Splunk provided environment for this workshop.

If you’re using your own Organisation refer to the specific list provided separately.

Now add an 2nd shift for Europe by again clicking +Add a shift → Partial Day

• Enter a Shift name of “Europe”
• Time Zone set to “Europe/London”
• Each user is on duty from “Monday through Friday from 9.00am to 5.00pm”
• Handoff happens every “5 days”
• The next handoff happens - Select the next Monday using the calendar
• Click Save Shift

You will again be prompted to add Members to this shift; add the Europe members who are Duane Chow, Steven Gomez and Walter White, but only if you’re using the Observability Workshop Org for this workshop.

If you’re using your own Organisation refer to the specific list provided separately.

Now add a 3rd shift for West Coast USA by again clicking +Add a shift - Partial Day

• Enter a Shift name of “West Coast”
• Time Zone set to “US/Pacific”
• Each user is on duty from “Monday through Friday from 9.00am to 5.00pm”
• Handoff happens every “5 days”
• The next handoff happens - Select the next Monday using the calendar
• Click Save Shift

You will again be prompted to add Members to this shift; add the West Coast members who are Maximo Arciniega, Michael Scott and Tuco Salamanca, but only if you’re using the Observability Workshop Org for this workshop.

If you’re using your own Organisation refer to the specific list provided separately.

The first user added will be the ‘current’ user for that shift.

You can re-order the shifts by simply dragging the users up and down, and you can change the current user by clicking Set Current on an alternate user

You will now have three different Shift patterns, that provide cover 24hr hours, Mon - Fri, but with no cover at weekends.

We will now add another Rotation for our Senior SRE Escalation cover.

2. Senior SRE Escalation

• Click Add Rotation
• Enter a name of “Senior SRE Escalation”
• Select 24/7 from the three available shift templates
• Enter a Shift name of “Senior SRE Escalation”
• Time Zone set to “Asia/Tokyo”
• Handoff happens every “7 days at 9.00am”
• The next handoff happens [select the next Monday from the date picker]
• Click Save Rotation

You will again be prompted to add Members to this shift; add the 24/7 members who are Jack Welker, Hank Schrader and Pam Beesly, but only if you’re using the Observability Workshop Org for this workshop.

If you’re using your own Organisation refer to the specific list provided separately.

Please wait for the instructor before proceeding to the Configuring Escalation Policies module.

Configure Escalation Policies

Aim

Escalation policies determine who is actually on-call for a given team and are the link to utilizing any rotations that have been created.

The aim of this module is for you to create three different Escalation Policies to demonstrate a number of different features and operating models.

The instructor will start by explaining the concepts before you proceed with the configuration.

Navigate to the Escalation Polices tab on the Teams sub menu, you should have no existing Polices so we need to create some.

We are going to create the following Polices to cover off three typical use cases.

1. 24/7 Policy

Click Add Escalation Policy

• Policy Name: 24/7
• Step 1
• Immediately
  • Notify the on-duty user(s) in rotation → Senior SRE Escalation
  • Click Save

2. Primary Policy

Click Add Escalation Policy

• Policy Name: Primary
• Step 1
• Immediately
• Notify the on-duty user(s) in rotation → Follow the Sun Support - Business Hours
• Click Add Step

• Step 2
• If still un-acknowledged after 15 minutes
• Notify the next user(s) in the current on-duty shift → Follow the Sun Support - Business Hours
• Click Add Step

• Step 3
• If still un-acknowledged after 15 more minutes
• Execute Policy → [Your Team Name] : 24/7
• Click Save

3. Waiting Room Policy

Click Add Escalation Policy

• Policy Name: Waiting Room
• Step 1
• If still un-acknowledged after 10 more minutes
• Execute Policy → [Your Team Name] : Primary
• Click Save

You should now have the following three escalation polices:

You may have noticed that when we created each policy there was the following warning message:

This is because there are no Routing Keys linked to these Escalation Polices, so now that we have these polices configured we can create the Routing Keys and link them to our Polices..

Continue and also complete the Creating Routing Keys module.

Creating Routing Keys

Aim

Routing Keys map the incoming alert messages from your monitoring system to an Escalation Policy which in turn sends the notifications to the appropriate team.

Note that routing keys are case insensitive and should only be composed of letters, numbers, hyphens, and underscores.

The aim of this module is for you to create some routing keys and then link them to your Escalation Policies you have created in the previous exercise.

1. Instance ID

Each participant requires a unique Routing Key so we use the Hostname of the EC2 Instance you were allocated. We are only doing this to ensure your Routing Key is unique and we know all Hostnames are unique. In a production deployment the Routing Key would typically reflect the name of a System or Service being monitored, or a Team such as 1st Line Support etc.

Your welcome e-mail informed you of the details of your EC2 Instance that has been provided for you to use during this workshop and you should have logged into this as part of the 1st exercise.

The e-mail also contained the Hostname of the Instance, but you can also obtain it from the Instance directly. To get your Hostname from within the shell session connected to your Instance run the following command:

echo ${HOSTNAME}

zevn

It is very important that when creating the Routing Keys you use the 4 letter hostname allocated to you as a Detector has been configured within Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring using this hostname, so any deviation will cause future exercises to fail.

2 Create Routing Keys

Navigate to Settings on the main menu bar, you should now be at the Routing Keys page.

You are going to create the following two Routing Keys using the naming conventions listed in the following table, but replacing {==HOSTNAME==} with the value from above and replace TEAM_NAME with the team you were allocated or created earlier.

There will probably already be a number of Routing Keys configured, but to add a new one simply scroll to the bottom of the page and then click Add Key

In the left hand box, enter the name for the key as per the table above. In the Routing Key column, select your Teams Primary policy from the drop down in the Escalation Polices column. You can start typing your Team Name to filter the results.

Repeat the above steps for both Keys, xxxx_PRI and xxxx_WR, mapping them to your Teams Primary and Waiting Room policies.

You should now have two Routing Keys configured, similar to the following:

If you now navigate back to Teams → [Your Team Name] → Escalation Policies and look at the settings for your Primary and Waiting Room polices you will see that these now have Routes assigned to them.

The 24/7 policy does not have a Route assigned as this will only be triggered via an Execute Policy escalation from the Primary policy.

Please wait for the instructor before proceeding to the Incident Lifecycle/Overview module.