

Tips and Best Practices for being On-Call - semicolon
http://blog.pagerduty.com/2011/03/30/on-call-best-practices-part-1/

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tt
It doesn't matter very much how awesome your device is. You need at least a
second person who would also get the alert as a backup (assuming this is a
critical system that you really care about, otherwise you wouldn't want to be
on-call for it in the first place).

As the primary responder, your responsibility is to acknowledge any alert
within a minute or so. Otherwise, the backup person would have to jump in.

To ensure "accountability," you may have a manager who would be a third backup
and can escalate up from there.

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semicolon
Yes, a good escalation policy would have a primary responder, a backup or
secondary, and then one or managers, going up the hierarchy. PagerDuty
supports that and my next post will be on that topic.

Having a good device is important too though; if you sleep through or miss an
alert, it may take another 10-20 minutes or so (depending on the escalation
policy) before the alert escalates to the next person. This slack time could
be pretty important depending on the severity of the problem.

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tylerrooney
I would recommend against "picking sharp or piercing ringtones". I once had a
horrific on-call schedule and, like any mammal, I developed a Pavlovian
response to the sound of my pager which resembled those door buzzers that
retail stores use. Friends of mine told me that I used to jump when I heard
them go off.

So realize that whatever that ringtone is you'll associate it with this kind
of anger:
[http://www.jeckels.com/photoDetail?PhotoId=4586&Category...](http://www.jeckels.com/photoDetail?PhotoId=4586&CategoryIndex=50&ReferringCategoryId=447)

~~~
semicolon
Nice; it looks like that pager was an Amazon one too.

There was a time when the sound of my pager (or even my cell phone's SMS
ringtone) would get my heart beating faster.

Maybe this would be a good ringtone for being on-call:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bNE-5TVAmg>

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vacri
Forgot to mention that you also need a patient spouse.

