Incident Response: Latency & 504 Errors
This case study documents an incident involving intermittent latency spikes and 504 Gateway Timeout errors under peak traffic. It demonstrates structured incident analysis, clear communication, and actionable remediation planning.
DevOps SRE Platform Engineer
Monitoring Incident Response Postmortem Analysis Alerting Performance Optimization
The Problem
API response time increased from ~200ms to ~3000ms with approximately 5% of requests returning 504 Gateway Timeout errors. The incident lasted ~45 minutes during peak traffic hours, impacting user experience and system reliability.
The Solution
Implemented a comprehensive incident response approach including detailed timeline documentation, root cause analysis, and structured remediation planning. Created monitoring improvements with enhanced dashboards and alerting to reduce MTTR and prevent recurrence.
Key Highlights
- postmortem.md: Complete incident timeline, analysis approach, and remediation plan
- monitoring.md: Dashboard and alerting improvements documentation
- Repeatable postmortem format for future incidents
- Identified monitoring gaps and actionable closure strategies
- Prioritized fixes that reduce MTTR and prevent recurrence
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