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Load Average Forty

The miner is the canary

You are on the platform operations team. It is 09:10. A monitoring alert has been open since the early hours, and it reaches you with a diagnosis and a fix already proposed.

OPS-7719 · priority highKemi · Platform on-call · 09:04

"web-03 has been at load average forty since the early hours and checkout is timing out. top shows a kworker eating every core: looks like a kernel bug or a stuck driver. Can you have a look? Can we just kill it, or reboot?"

Before you start: how this works

01One objective at a timeYou are always told, in one sentence, what you are trying to establish right now. Only the actions that serve it are shown, and you can open the full list whenever you like.

02Time passesEvery action costs minutes in the story. Nothing is on a real-world timer, so think as long as you like, but the minutes inside the incident have consequences in it.

03Some things cannot be undoneWrong moves make the incident bigger, not just lower-scoring. This one can reach CRITICAL, where the run ends and somebody more senior takes it off you.

04Mistakes are the lessonEvery wrong turn is written up at the end with what it cost and what the better move was. Finish the range (any outcome) and its interview pack unlocks.

You are judged on three things. Accuracy: did you work out what was really wrong and deal with it. Economy: how directly you got there, in the incident’s own minutes. Integrity: what you preserved, who you told, and whether you claimed anything you had not established. The third is the one people fail.

Finish it, with any outcome, and its interview pack unlocks: 4 questions with weak, good and strong answers, the follow-up, and the trap.

Load Average Forty · OPS-7719 · priority high

Wall clock: 09:10
Time spent: 0m
Situation: ·
Severity: ·

Choose one

Incident log

Everything you do, in order. This is what a real handover is written from.

Nothing has happened yet.

How bad is it

Wrong moves push this up. Containing the problem pushes it back down.

What you have established

Facts you have actually observed, not guesses.

Nothing yet.