Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems 1st Edition

by Betsy Beyer (Editor), Chris Jones (Editor), Jennifer Petoff (Editor),

27 customer reviews

ISBN-13: 978-1491929124

ISBN-10: 149192912X

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The overwhelming majority of a software system’s lifespan is spent in use, not in design or implementation. So, why does conventional wisdom insist that software engineers focus primarily on the design and development of large-scale computing systems?

In this collection of essays and articles, key members of Google’s Site Reliability Team explain how and why their commitment to the entire lifecycle has enabled the company to successfully build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world. You’ll learn the principles and practices that enable Google engineers to make systems more scalable, reliable, and efficient—lessons directly applicable to your organization.

This book is divided into four sections:

Introduction—Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practices
Principles—Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE)
Practices—Understand the theory and practice of an SRE’s day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systems
Management—Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use

Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems

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From the Publisher

This book is divided into four sections:

Introduction—Learn what site reliability engineering is and why it differs from conventional IT industry practices
Principles—Examine the patterns, behaviors, and areas of concern that influence the work of a site reliability engineer (SRE)
Practices—Understand the theory and practice of an SRE’s day-to-day work: building and operating large distributed computing systems
Management—Explore Google's best practices for training, communication, and meetings that your organization can use

How to Read This Book

This book is a series of essays written by members and alumni of Google’s Site Reliability Engineering organization. It’s much more like conference proceedings than it is like a standard book by an author or a small number of authors. Each chapter is intended to be read as a part of a coherent whole, but a good deal can be gained by reading on whatever subject particularly interests you. (If there are other articles that support or inform the text, we reference them so you can follow up accordingly.)

You don’t need to read in any particular order, though we’d suggest at least starting with Chapters 2 and 3, which describe Google’s production environment and outline how SRE approaches risk, respectively. (Risk is, in many ways, the key quality of our profession.) Reading cover-to-cover is, of course, also useful and possible; our chapters are grouped thematically, into Principles (Part II), Practices (Part III), and Management (Part IV). Each has a small introduction that highlights what the individual pieces are about, and references other articles published by Google SREs, covering specific topics in more detail. Additionally, there’s a companion website mentioned in the book that has a number of helpful resources.

We hope this will be at least as useful and interesting to you as putting it together was for us.

— The Editors

About the Author

Betsy Beyer is a Technical Writer for Google in New York City specializing in Site Reliability Engineering. She has previously written documentation for Google’s Data Center and Hardware Operations Teams in Mountain View and across its globally distributed datacenters. Before moving to New York, Betsy was a lecturer on technical writing at Stanford University. En route to her current career, Betsy studied International Relations and English Literature, and holds degrees from Stanford and Tulane.

Chris Jones is a Site Reliability Engineer for Google App Engine, a cloud platform-as-a-service product serving over 28 billion requests per day. Based in San Francisco, he has previously been responsible for the care and feeding of Google’s advertising statistics, data warehousing, and customer support systems. In other lives, Chris has worked in academic IT, analyzed data for political campaigns, and engaged in some light BSD kernel hacking, picking up degrees in Computer Engineering, Economics, and Technology Policy along the way. He’s also a licensed professional engineer.

Jennifer Petoff is a Program Manager for Google’s Site Reliability Engineering team and based in Dublin, Ireland. She has managed large global projects across wide-ranging domains including scientific research, engineering, human resources, and advertising operations. Jennifer joined Google after spending eight years in the chemical industry. She holds a PhD in Chemistry from Stanford University and a BS in Chemistry and a BA in Psychology from the University of Rochester.

Niall Murphy leads the Ads Site Reliability Engineering team at Google Ireland. He has been involved in the Internet industry for about 20 years, and is currently chairperson of INEX, Ireland’s peering hub. He is the author or coauthor of a number of technical papers and/or books, including "IPv6 Network Administration" for O’Reilly, and a number of RFCs. He is currently cowriting a history of the Internet in Ireland, and is the holder of degrees in Computer Science, Mathematics, and Poetry Studies, which is surely some kind of mistake. He lives in Dublin with his wife and two sons.

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Product Details

Paperback: 552 pages
Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (April 16, 2016)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 149192912X
ISBN-13: 978-1491929124
Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 1.3 x 9.1 inches
Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Software Design, Testing & Engineering > Testing
- #2 in Books > Computers & Technology > Networking & Cloud Computing > Network Administration > Disaster & Recovery
- #3 in Books > Computers & Technology > Computer Science > Systems Analysis & Design

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Customer Reviews

3.9 out of 5 stars

5 star		56%
4 star		11%
3 star		19%
2 star		7%
1 star		7%

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Top Customer Reviews

Used most of a highlighter on this book...

By RJ on June 26, 2016

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

The really liked this book. Cool to see how Google actually runs things at their scale. Got me thinking about things I never thought about when it comes to my work in tech. This could sound like the book makes you paranoid, but I think that's too negative. I felt more like I now have a little license and education on how things can (and will) fail and how I can better prepare for and mitigate them. It's like you got to do a ride along in a busy Ambulance service, gets you thinking "hmm, maybe I should take that CPR course and brush up on the heimlich maneuver...".

Even though several of the topics covered weren't things I deal with day to day, I think the mindset you develop after seeing how they solve various issues applies to most any IT / tech endeavor (i.e. whether you're in ops, a SWE, etc.). I think if this book's subject interests you at all, you'll really appreciate having read it.

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The book felt a lot like an intro to Google

By Scott Piper on September 29, 2016

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

First, this book is a collection of writings by different authors, none of which is listed on the cover. The cover lists the editors, none of which actually wrote the text in the book. The chapters flow well enough, but it's distracting being reminded constantly who "edited" one chapter to the next. That's such a minor role.

The book felt a lot like an intro to Google, by which I mean if you were thinking about joining Google or were a new hire, you would be handed this book. There are some general concepts that apply world wide, but a lot of the text is spent introducing different Google-only projects. They could have just referred to projects by the types of solutions they are, or mention the open-source industry standard versions of the tools, but instead, it's a lot of internal project names with a classic Google approach of ignoring everything that's not-google.

Ultimately, I didn't gain any new insights from the book.

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Worth reading

By Trey Palmer on September 30, 2016

Format: Paperback

_Site Reliability Engineering_ is a series of essays about Google's DevOps engineering organization. No one else runs at Google's scale, and they are a major pioneer of modern DevOps, though they generally eschew the term. Given those facts alone, it almost goes without saying that this book is worth a read by internet company engineers and anyone else interested in running web infrastructure at massive scale.

While it's divided into five sections, there are really two primary topics: essays on company culture at the front and back, sandwiching a center section on technical best practices. Of the two, the culture sections are generally more interesting and relevant.

Google's SRE culture is fascinating and enlightening. The insistence on a balance between on-call/ops and project work makes great sense. Google's concept of an error budget alone makes this book worth reading. I loved the example of an internal service that just never failed out of simple luck. The service wasn't designed or operated to be available to 5 nines, and at Google "hope is not a strategy", and a service shouldn't be be an order of magnitude more reliable than its error budget allows. Their solution is to shut it down occasionally to flush out developers using it in unintended ways. Most anyone in our field is likely to have done "scream testing" at some point, though perhaps in a less formal fashion. I feel largely absolved for a practice I've always considered sloppy and unprofessional!

The technical sections are mostly extremely high-level generalities, and more variable in quality than the cultural sections. I found some parts to be mostly common sense, and some really useful.Read more ›

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Tractable advice on how to run reliable systems like Google

By Mike on April 16, 2016

Format: Paperback

Google has been working for about 2 years on a book about Site Reliability Engineering, the discipline and organization that keeps Google's large-scale systems running smoothly. "Site Reliability Engineering" was finally published last week. It spans some 500 pages, and offers a rare inside glimpse into how Google actually works. The authors are remarkably open, naming technologies and projects, and explaining how systems work. There may not be source code, but there's lots here that can be implemented outside Google. That makes it a great read for startups expecting to scale and small-to-medium tech companies that want to up their reliability game.

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it's alright

By rj45 on November 23, 2016

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

This is more of a best practice and general guide book on site reliability engineering/devops. While it covers a range of topics, don't look for any low level details on implementation or you'll be sorely disappointed.

Considering that this book comes from google, I'm actually disappointed with the quality of the book; I really expected much more on implementation details. The average Unix sys admin books will give you more than what this book offers.

If you're a manager, you'll like this book. If you're engineer, you may or may not like this book.

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Kindle edition is horribly formatted

By Amazon Customer on May 3, 2016

Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase

The Kindle edition is horribly formatted. Headings, subheadings and call-outs are not visible as such, but appear as normal body text. Unacceptable for such an expensive publication.

Additional information: this is on Windows 10, with the Kindle reader app from the Windows Store. Attached screenshot shows how the author and editor credits, as well as a quote, appear as normal body text at the start of a chapter: this problem persists through the entire publication, and is especially annoying for subheadings. All my other Kindle books look fine using the same reader app.

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