From Monitoring to Postmortems: How SREs Run Rootly

Site Reliability Engineering has evolved far beyond simple uptime monitoring. In 2025, modern SREs are code-savvy engineers who understand both infrastructure and application behavior. They don't just monitor systems—they build them to be self-healing, scalable, and observable.

But here's the thing... having brilliant SRE practices means nothing if you don't have the right tooling to back them up. That's where understanding the complete SRE tooling stack becomes crucial—and why platforms like Rootly have become essential for teams serious about incident management.

What's Included in the Modern SRE Tooling Stack?

The SRE toolchain has gotten more sophisticated (and honestly, more complex) over the years. These tools for site reliability engineers can be categorized into four groups: monitoring/observability, on-call and incident management, configuration and automation, and internal developer portals.

Monitoring and Observability

Monitoring and observability are two fundamental functions for maintaining system health. SREs collaborate closely with monitoring tools to develop custom queries within alert managers.

The heavy hitters in this space include:

• Prometheus and Grafana - An open-source duo frequently utilized to collect and display metrics. Prometheus gathers time-series metrics, and Grafana offers user-friendly dashboards for real-time analysis.
• Datadog - A one-stop observability platform that collects metrics, logs, and traces. Perfect for cloud-native environments with AWS, Kubernetes, and additional support.
• New Relic - Provides end-to-end visibility from frontend performance to backend infrastructure. Its strength is APM, custom instrumentation, and service maps.

Containerization and Orchestration

Microservices architectures break down monolithic systems into independent logical functions or services. Containers play a vital role in packaging all the necessary components (code, libraries, dependencies, etc.) of microservices to guarantee their proper execution.

Key tools include:

• Docker for containerization
• Kubernetes for orchestration
• Apache Mesos and Podman as alternatives

Infrastructure Automation

Modern SREs don't do manual work when they can automate it. If you're an SRE, you love automation. Why spend time doing manual work when you can make your system work for you?

Essential automation tools:

• Terraform for infrastructure as code
• Ansible for configuration management
• Jenkins for CI/CD pipelines

SRE Tools for Incident Tracking

When things go wrong (and they will), incident tracking becomes your lifeline. Incident management tools are vital for managing system architecture. They integrate with monitoring/error tracking/logging applications to channel incoming system alerts to specific internal services, initiating recovery processes.

The landscape includes several solid options:

Traditional Players

• PagerDuty - A commercial incident management platform that helps SREs manage and resolve incidents faster. It provides on-call scheduling, alerting, and escalation policies, ensuring that critical issues are addressed promptly.
• Opsgenie - This on-call management tool provides flexibility for various teams and approaches; this dynamic report also supports identifying the key areas for enhancement.
• Incident.io - A commercial platform for full-stack incident management. With features like integrated on-call schedule management, unified alerting, and powerful workflow automation, Incident.io offers an improved incident response experience from end to end.

The Rootly Difference

But here's where things get interesting... While these tools handle the basics, Rootly takes a different approach to incident management that's specifically designed for modern SRE workflows.

Rootly stands out because it doesn't just track incidents—it orchestrates the entire incident lifecycle. From the moment an alert fires to the final postmortem analysis, Rootly creates a seamless workflow that actually helps SREs do their job better, not just track what they're doing.

From Monitoring to Postmortems: How SREs Use Rootly

The real magic happens when you see how SREs actually use Rootly throughout their entire incident response process. It's not just another ticket system—it's a purpose-built platform that understands how modern engineering teams actually work.

Automated Incident Detection and Response

When monitoring tools like Prometheus or Datadog detect an issue, Rootly doesn't just create a ticket and wait. It immediately:

• Spins up dedicated incident channels in Slack or Microsoft Teams
• Pulls in the right people based on on-call schedules and service ownership
• Starts collecting timeline data automatically
• Begins coordinating response efforts without manual intervention

Real-Time Collaboration Hub

SRE teams need to collaborate in a timely manner and quickly solve problems before they escalate. To do this, they need a messaging platform that enables interpersonal communication in a closed, secure environment, and can integrate with operational systems to stream notifications and alerts to SREs.

Rootly creates this environment by becoming the central nervous system during incidents. Everyone involved—from SREs to product managers to customer support—has visibility into what's happening without the chaos of multiple communication channels.

Intelligent Workflow Automation

Here's what separates Rootly from traditional incident tracking tools: it understands that every organization has different processes, but every incident follows similar patterns.

The platform learns from your team's response patterns and automatically:

• Suggests likely root causes based on similar past incidents
• Recommends subject matter experts to involve
• Triggers runbooks and response procedures
• Updates status pages and stakeholder communications

Comprehensive Postmortem Process

Engineers use observability tools to automate the anomaly detection process and take corrective actions when anomalies are detected. Engineers can maintain system uptime by monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) for reliability and availability.

But monitoring is only half the story. The real learning happens in postmortems, and this is where Rootly truly shines.

Traditional postmortem processes are painful—scattered notes, missed action items, and analysis that takes weeks to complete. Rootly captures everything throughout the incident lifecycle, so when it's time for the postmortem:

• Timeline data is already collected and organized
• All communications are preserved and searchable
• Action items are automatically tracked and assigned
• Trends and patterns across incidents become visible

Integration with Your Existing Stack

The beauty of Rootly is that it doesn't require you to rip and replace your existing tooling. Integration with various monitoring tools make it possible for teams to seamlessly detect incidents across your stack and resolve them, improving overall system reliability.

Whether you're running Prometheus and Grafana, Datadog, New Relic, or any combination of observability tools, Rootly plugs into your existing workflow and enhances it rather than disrupting it.

The Future of SRE Tooling

As we charge into 2025, one thing is clear: the DevOps and SRE world isn't slowing down—it's accelerating. AI might be automating tasks at an unprecedented pace, but the best teams know that the right tools, combined with human expertise, make all the difference.

The most successful SRE teams aren't just collecting tools—they're building integrated workflows that connect monitoring, incident response, and continuous improvement into a cohesive practice.

That's exactly what Rootly enables. It's not just another SRE tool; it's the platform that connects all your other tools into a workflow that actually makes sense for how modern engineering teams operate.

Ready to Transform Your Incident Management?

The difference between reactive and proactive SRE practices often comes down to having the right platform in place. Organizations that embrace SRE see improvements in uptime, deployment velocity, and incident response. They also gain better alignment between engineering and business goals, thanks to measurable reliability targets and proactive system design.

If you're tired of juggling multiple tools and fighting with fragmented incident processes, it's time to see how Rootly can streamline your entire incident management workflow. From automated response to intelligent postmortems, Rootly is designed specifically for teams who understand that reliability isn't just about uptime—it's about building systems and processes that help your engineering team thrive.

Start your free trial and discover how Rootly transforms the way engineering teams handle incidents, from first alert to final postmortem.

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