---
title: "HeliosDB Operational Runbooks"
---

# HeliosDB Operational Runbooks

## Overview

This directory contains operational runbooks for managing HeliosDB in production environments. Each runbook provides procedures, troubleshooting guidance, and validation steps for common operational scenarios.

---

## Runbook Index

### 1. [Deployment Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/deployment_runbook/)
**Purpose:** Procedures for deploying HeliosDB updates and new versions

**Key Topics:**
- Pre-deployment checklist
- Rolling update procedure
- Blue-green deployment steps
- Rollback procedures
- Post-deployment validation
- Common deployment issues

**When to Use:**
- Deploying version updates
- Applying patches
- Rolling back deployments
- Validating deployments

---

### 2. [Incident Response Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/incident_response_runbook/)
**Purpose:** Structured approach to handling production incidents

**Key Topics:**
- Incident classification (P0-P4)
- Initial response steps
- Escalation procedures
- Communication templates
- Postmortem process
- Incident examples

**When to Use:**
- Service outages
- Performance degradation
- Data integrity issues
- Any production incident

---

### 3. [Scaling Operations Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/scaling_operations_runbook/)
**Purpose:** Manual and automated scaling procedures

**Key Topics:**
- Manual scale up/down procedures
- Auto-scaling configuration
- Resource monitoring
- Capacity planning
- Cost optimization

**When to Use:**
- Resource constraints (CPU, memory, disk)
- Performance optimization
- Capacity planning
- Cost reduction

---

### 4. [Backup and Restore Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/backup_restore_runbook/)
**Purpose:** Comprehensive backup and disaster recovery procedures

**Key Topics:**
- Backup verification
- Point-in-time recovery (PITR) steps
- Full restore procedure
- Cross-region restore
- Recovery time estimation
- Backup troubleshooting

**When to Use:**
- Disaster recovery
- Data corruption
- Accidental data deletion
- Migration scenarios
- DR testing

---

### 5. [Database Maintenance Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/database_maintenance_runbook/)
**Purpose:** Regular maintenance tasks for database health

**Key Topics:**
- VACUUM procedure
- ANALYZE statistics update
- Index rebuilding (REINDEX)
- Table reorganization
- Query performance analysis
- Storage management

**When to Use:**
- Scheduled maintenance windows
- Performance degradation
- Storage bloat
- Index optimization
- Query tuning

---

### 6. [Performance Troubleshooting Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/performance_troubleshooting_runbook/)
**Purpose:** Diagnosing and resolving performance issues

**Key Topics:**
- Slow query identification
- High CPU investigation
- Memory pressure analysis
- Disk I/O bottlenecks
- Network latency debugging
- Performance tuning checklist

**When to Use:**
- Slow queries
- High resource usage
- System bottlenecks
- Latency issues
- Performance optimization

---

### 7. [GPU Operations Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/gpu_operations_runbook/)
**Purpose:** Managing GPU acceleration features

**Key Topics:**
- Enable/disable GPU acceleration
- GPU health monitoring
- GPU memory management
- Fallback to CPU procedure
- GPU troubleshooting
- CUDA/ROCm diagnostics

**When to Use:**
- GPU configuration
- GPU performance issues
- GPU memory errors
- GPU hardware failures
- CUDA/ROCm updates

---

### 8. [Multi-Region Operations Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/multi_region_operations_runbook/)
**Purpose:** Managing multi-region deployments

**Key Topics:**
- Region health monitoring
- Manual failover procedure
- Consistency verification
- Cross-region replication checks
- Region addition/removal
- Multi-region troubleshooting

**When to Use:**
- Regional failovers
- Adding/removing regions
- Replication issues
- Split-brain scenarios
- Cross-region performance

---

### 9. [Schema Evolution Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/schema_evolution_runbook/)
**Purpose:** Managing online schema changes and migrations

**Key Topics:**
- Pre-change compatibility checks
- Additive schema changes
- Backfill procedures
- Validation queries
- Rollback planning

**When to Use:**
- Adding columns, indexes, or constraints
- Migrating application writes to a new schema
- Running large backfills
- Removing deprecated schema after compatibility windows

---

### 10. [Materialized Views Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/materialized_views_runbook/)
**Purpose:** Managing materialized-view refresh, validation, and recovery

**Key Topics:**
- Pre-change checks
- Refresh strategy selection
- Initial refresh and backfill
- Monitoring and troubleshooting
- Rollback planning

**When to Use:**
- Creating a materialized view for a production workload
- Changing refresh cadence
- Recovering from stale or failed refreshes
- Validating query-rewrite behavior

---

## Quick Start Guide

### For New Operators

1. **Familiarize with core runbooks first:**
   - Start with [Incident Response](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/incident_response_runbook/)
   - Review [Deployment](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/deployment_runbook/)
   - Understand [Backup and Restore](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/backup_restore_runbook/)

2. **Prepare monitoring before using procedures:**
   - Configure Prometheus alerts from runbooks
   - Set up Grafana dashboards
   - Test alert routing

3. **Practice procedures in staging:**
   - Test deployments
   - Practice failovers
   - Validate backup/restore

4. **Review incident examples:**
   - Study P0-P4 incident scenarios
   - Review postmortem templates
   - Understand escalation paths

### For Experienced Operators

- **Quick Reference Sections:** Each runbook has a "Quick Reference" section at the end with essential commands
- **Decision Trees:** Look for decision flowcharts in troubleshooting sections
- **Automation Scripts:** Many procedures include automation scripts ready for use

---

## Runbook Usage Guidelines

### Before Using a Runbook

1. **Assess the situation:**
   - Severity (P0-P4)
   - Impact scope
   - Time sensitivity

2. **Gather diagnostics:**
   - System metrics
   - Recent logs
   - Error messages
   - Timeline

3. **Notify stakeholders:**
   - On-call team
   - Manager (if P0/P1)
   - Customers (if customer-impacting)

### During Procedure Execution

1. **Follow steps sequentially** (unless explicitly stated otherwise)
2. **Document actions** (timestamps, commands, results)
3. **Validate after each step** (don't skip verification)
4. **Communicate progress** (war room updates every 15-30 minutes)
5. **Know when to escalate** (if stuck > 15 minutes or procedure fails)

### After Procedure Completion

1. **Validate success:**
   - Run health checks
   - Monitor metrics (30-60 minutes)
   - Verify customer impact resolved

2. **Document the incident:**
   - Create postmortem (P0/P1)
   - Update runbook if needed
   - Share learnings with team

3. **Follow up:**
   - Complete action items
   - Update monitoring/alerts
   - Schedule preventive maintenance

---

## Common Scenarios and Runbook Selection

### Scenario: Service is Down
→ **[Incident Response Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/incident_response_runbook/)**
- Section 6.1: Complete Service Outage

### Scenario: Deploying a New Version
→ **[Deployment Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/deployment_runbook/)**
- Section 2: Rolling Update Procedure (backward compatible)
- Section 3: Blue-Green Deployment (major version)

### Scenario: Slow Queries
→ **[Performance Troubleshooting Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/performance_troubleshooting_runbook/)**
- Section 1: Slow Query Identification

→ **[Database Maintenance Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/database_maintenance_runbook/)**
- Section 5: Query Performance Analysis

### Scenario: Running Out of Disk Space
→ **[Incident Response Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/incident_response_runbook/)**
- Section 6.3: Disk Space Exhaustion

→ **[Database Maintenance Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/database_maintenance_runbook/)**
- Section 6: Storage Management

### Scenario: Need to Restore Data
→ **[Backup and Restore Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/backup_restore_runbook/)**
- Section 2: Point-in-Time Recovery (specific time)
- Section 3: Full Restore (complete disaster)

### Scenario: High CPU Usage
→ **[Performance Troubleshooting Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/performance_troubleshooting_runbook/)**
- Section 2: High CPU Investigation

→ **[Scaling Operations Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/scaling_operations_runbook/)**
- Section 1: Manual Scaling Procedures

### Scenario: Primary Region Failure
→ **[Multi-Region Operations Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/multi_region_operations_runbook/)**
- Section 2.4: Emergency Failover Procedure

### Scenario: GPU Not Working
→ **[GPU Operations Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/gpu_operations_runbook/)**
- Section 5: GPU Troubleshooting

### Scenario: Replication Lag High
→ **[Multi-Region Operations Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/multi_region_operations_runbook/)**
- Section 4.3: Replication Troubleshooting

→ **[Incident Response Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/incident_response_runbook/)**
- Section 6.2: Replication Lag Example

### Scenario: Scheduled Maintenance
→ **[Database Maintenance Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/database_maintenance_runbook/)**
- Section 1: VACUUM Procedure
- Section 3: Index Rebuilding

---

## Support and Escalation

### Level 1: On-Call Engineer
- **Responsibility:** Execute runbooks, gather diagnostics
- **Response SLA:** 5 minutes

### Level 2: Senior SRE
- **Responsibility:** Non-standard procedures, cross-team coordination
- **Response SLA:** 15 minutes

### Level 3: Engineering Manager
- **Responsibility:** Service degradation decisions, customer communication
- **Response SLA:** 30 minutes

### Level 4: CTO
- **Responsibility:** Major incidents, executive decisions
- **Response SLA:** Best effort

**Escalation Criteria:** See [Incident Response Runbook - Section 3](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/incident_response_runbook/#escalation-procedures)

---

## Runbook Maintenance

### Updating Runbooks

**When to Update:**
- After incident postmortems (lessons learned)
- System changes (new features, configuration changes)
- Process improvements
- Feedback from operators

**How to Update:**
1. Create branch: `git checkout -b update-runbook-xyz`
2. Edit runbook(s)
3. Add entry to "Revision History"
4. Create PR and get review
5. Merge and notify team

### Feedback

Send feedback or suggestions to:
- The operations issue tracker
- The owning SRE or database operations team
- Runbook feedback: support@heliosdb.com

---

## Additional Resources

### Related Documentation
- [Security Operations](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/security/security_operations/)

### External Resources
- [PostgreSQL Documentation](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/)
- [Kubernetes Operations](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/)
- [AWS Best Practices](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/latest/framework/welcome.html)

### Training
- HeliosDB Operations Bootcamp
- PostgreSQL DBA Certification
- Kubernetes Administrator Certification
- AWS Solutions Architect

---

## Appendix

### A. Common Commands Cheat Sheet

```bash
# Health checks
curl http://heliosdb-lb:7000/health
psql -h heliosdb-lb -U admin -c "SELECT version();"

# Metrics
curl http://heliosdb-lb:7000/metrics | grep query_duration
curl http://heliosdb-lb:7000/metrics | grep error_rate

# Replication status
psql -h heliosdb-primary -U admin -c "SELECT * FROM pg_stat_replication;"

# Active queries
psql -h heliosdb-lb -U admin -c "SELECT * FROM pg_stat_activity WHERE state = 'active';"

# Slow queries
psql -h heliosdb-lb -U admin -c "SELECT query, mean_exec_time FROM pg_stat_statements ORDER BY mean_exec_time DESC LIMIT 10;"

# Disk space
df -h /var/lib/heliosdb

# Service control
systemctl status heliosdb
systemctl restart heliosdb
```

### B. Monitoring Dashboards

- **Overview Dashboard:** HeliosDB overview dashboard
- **Performance Dashboard:** query latency, throughput, and resource dashboard
- **Multi-Region Dashboard:** replication lag and regional health dashboard
- **GPU Dashboard:** accelerator health and memory dashboard

### C. Emergency Contacts

| Role | Contact | Backup |
|------|---------|--------|
| On-Call Primary | On-call rotation | Secondary on-call |
| On-Call Senior | Senior SRE rotation | Database operations lead |
| Engineering Manager | Engineering escalation path | Product escalation path |
| Database Team Lead | Database operations lead | Platform lead |
| Cloud Operations | Cloud operations queue | Platform operations queue |

### D. War Room Procedures

**When to Create War Room:**
- P0/P1 incidents
- Major deployments
- Planned failovers

**How to Create:**
1. Start an incident meeting.
2. Post the meeting link in the incident channel.
3. Update the service health page
4. Notify stakeholders

---

## License

Refer to the HeliosDB documentation license for usage terms.

---

**For urgent assistance during incidents, refer to the [Incident Response Runbook](https://www.heliosdb.com/docs/full/operations/runbooks/incident_response_runbook/) first.**