The Operations File: A Pattern for Establishing Maintainable Systems (opens in new tab)

Any complex system outgrows an operator’s memory. When you’re building a solution, you get a handful of services running and for the time we’re doing immediate development, you can hold the whole picture in your head. We know where the configs live, which ports map to what services & how to restart the occasionally hanging service. Then one evening something breaks and you realize you can’t remember whether the database runs in a container or as a systemd service. We’re not even sure which lo...