Operability
Summary: Making it easy for operations teams to keep the system running smoothly.
Sources: chapter1
Last updated: 2026-04-15
Operability means making it easy for the operations team to keep the system healthy, track down causes of problems, keep software up-to-date, and anticipate future problems (source: chapter1).
Characteristics of Good Operability
- Providing visibility into the runtime behavior and internals of the system, with good monitoring (telemetry).
- Providing good support for automation and integration with standard tools.
- Avoiding dependency on individual machines.
- Providing good documentation and an easy-to-understand operational model.
- Providing good default behavior, but also giving administrators the freedom to override defaults when needed.
- Self-healing where appropriate, but also giving administrators manual control over the system state when needed.