News, experience and lessons learned
The runbook you need at three in the morning
A one-page service runbook template: purpose, dependencies, logs, health checks, recovery and escalation, without storing passwords in the document.
Five things to record before restarting a server
A concise restart checklist covering affected users, dependencies, active work, recovery access and a meaningful post-restart test.
The server is up. Does the service actually work?
Go beyond ping with a real user scenario, an essential dependency check and an actionable alert. Define what a healthy service means.
A few minutes of clock drift: how much trouble can it cause?
Check Windows domain time sources and synchronization before changing settings. Distinguish clock drift from a time-zone display issue.
Your backup is green. When did you last restore a file?
Test file recovery in a separate location, check content and permissions, and record the actual time needed to return a usable file.
Before changing MikroTik, prepare your rollback
A short checklist for remote MikroTik changes: Backup versus Export, Safe Mode, emergency access and clear rollback criteria.
Internet down or just a DNS problem?
A practical checklist to distinguish network, DNS and application failures before changing settings. Read the evidence and choose the next test.