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← All break/fix scenarios in Observability

intermediatealertmanager~20 min

Break/Fix: Alert Firing Continuously

Reported symptoms

  • Alert fires; the underlying condition does not clear

Evidence

  • · Alert has been firing for hours or days
Diagnosis and resolutionclick to reveal

Root cause

Either the issue persists, or the rule has no recovery path.

Remediation

1. Verify the condition is still true. 2. If true: treat as incident. 3. If false: check `for:` duration and resolve.

Verification

Alert transitions through firing → resolved.

Prevention

Rules should test the recovery path too, not only the firing path.

Scenario

You are operating a production observability platform. The following symptoms appear:

  • Alert fires; the underlying condition does not clear

Available evidence:

  • Alert has been firing for hours or days

Your task

Determine the cause, recover, document, and validate.

Investigation

The investigation follows the discipline taught in Part XCVIII:

  1. Form hypothesis, find evidence, test, validate.
  2. Use the available evidence above to bound the search.
  3. Reach one of the likely root causes.

Recovery procedure

(Do not reveal until you have reasoned through the problem.)

  1. Identify the failing component.
  2. Apply the remediation pathway.
  3. Validate with the verification step.
  4. Document the incident.

Remediation

  1. Verify the condition is still true. 2. If true: treat as incident. 3. If false: check for: duration and resolve.

Verification

Alert transitions through firing → resolved.

Rollback

Revert rule change

Prevention

Rules should test the recovery path too, not only the firing path.