Use Cases

Let’s discuss where Runbooks can be most useful.

Developer Self-Service

App developers can use Runbooks to easily launch new infrastructure that follows your organization’s best practices. For example:

• Create a new K8s Service
• Scaffold a new app repo
• Launch a new database
• Launch a new static website

Streamline Internal Processes

Many internal processes are captured as static documentation. But with Runbooks, you can complete the actual process by the time you’re doing reading the Runbook! For example:

• Provision a new AWS Account, configure the account baseline and all networking configurations, and validate everything along the way.
• Stand up a new customer with all the infrastructure and all the information they need to get started.

Document IaC Modules

When you create a reusable infrastructure-as-code (IaC) module, the code itself is not enough to be useful. You also need to document how to use the module, show common usage examples, and validate that it works as expected.

Traditional documentation describes your module, but Runbooks can actually collect configuration from the user, generate the module code, and validate that the module was created correctly. For example:

• Create an SNS topic that notifies a Slack channel
• Create an SNS topic that notifies an email address
• Create an SNS topic that notifies a PagerDuty service

You might define one Runbook for each of these, or a single Runbook that can create any of these configurations.

Next

You’re almost done with the intro! As a last step, let’s see how Runbooks compares to alternatives.