Rootly: Automated Remediation with IaC & Kubernetes

Automated remediation and self-healing systems are no longer just concepts; they are essential for managing modern, complex IT infrastructures like Kubernetes and Infrastructure as Code (IaC). In October 2025, these automated approaches are fundamentally transforming how engineering teams respond to incidents [1]. This guide explores how you can build a self-healing incident management setup using Rootly. We'll cover how Rootly integrates with tools like Terraform and Ansible, helps you design smart escalation rules, and can even trigger automated rollbacks in Kubernetes. The goal is to significantly reduce Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) and free your engineering teams from manual, repetitive tasks.

What Does a Self-Healing Incident Management Setup with Rootly Look Like?

A self-healing system is one that can automatically detect, diagnose, and resolve issues without requiring human intervention. The concept often draws inspiration from nature, aiming to create software systems that can autonomously recover from faults [2]. The principles are even being explored in advanced research for physical materials, such as smart bricks that can assess and recover from damage [3].

In a software context, Rootly acts as the central nervous system for your self-healing setup. It uses a powerful workflow engine to coordinate automated responses across all your tools and infrastructure. This automation is critical for handling incidents at scale and reducing the cognitive load on your response teams [4].

A typical self-healing flow with Rootly looks like this:

• Detection: An alert is received from a monitoring tool like Datadog or PagerDuty.
• Triage: Rootly automatically creates an incident and can place it in an In Triage state. This gives your team a space to investigate before declaring a major incident and waking everyone up.
• Orchestration: A pre-configured Rootly workflow is triggered based on the incident's properties, such as its severity level or the affected service.
• Action: The workflow executes a series of automated tasks, which can include communication, escalation, and direct remediation actions.

With Rootly's extensive automation and workflow capabilities, you can design a self-healing environment tailored precisely to your organization's needs.

How to Design Automated Escalation and Communication Rules in Rootly

A key part of automated incident management is getting the right information to the right people at the right time. Rootly's workflows allow you to codify your escalation and communication policies into repeatable, automated processes.

Automating Incident Escalation

You can set up workflow triggers in Rootly based on incident severity (e.g., SEV0, SEV1) or specific services. These workflows can then automatically page on-call engineers using integrations with tools like PagerDuty.

For example, if an incident is declared SEV0 for a critical payment service, a workflow can be configured to immediately page the primary on-call for that service and the on-call incident commander. You can explore practical examples in our PagerDuty workflow documentation. Workflows can also escalate to leadership if an incident isn't acknowledged or resolved within a defined timeframe, ensuring executives get the timely, concise updates they need, which is a best practice for working effectively with executives during an incident.

Automating Incident Communication

Clear, centralized communication is vital during an outage. Rootly automates this by creating a dedicated Slack channel for each incident. Workflows can then automatically invite the correct teams, engineers, and stakeholders to the channel so collaboration can start immediately.

To keep the incident channel clean and easy to follow, Rootly workflows can be configured to automatically update previously posted Slack messages with new information instead of creating a stream of new posts. This is just one of the many ways you can automate incident response with Slack to keep your team focused on resolution.

How Can Rootly Integrate with Terraform or Ansible for Automated Remediation?

Connecting your incident management platform with IaC tools is where automated remediation truly shines. While Rootly may not have a single-click integration button for tools like Terraform or Ansible, it uses flexible webhooks and script-based workflow steps to trigger actions in virtually any external system. This powerful capability allows you to build automations that address the root cause of an issue, moving beyond simple restarts [5].

The integration process is straightforward:

1. Create a Remediation Script: Write a script (e.g., a Python or Bash script) that executes the command you need, like running a terraform apply or an Ansible playbook.
2. Expose it via an Endpoint: Host this script behind a secure API endpoint. You can use a CI/CD tool like Jenkins, a serverless function, or another internal service to do this.
3. Configure a Rootly Workflow: Create a workflow in Rootly that triggers based on a specific incident condition, like an incident type of "Cache Service Failure."
4. Add a Webhook Task: In the workflow, add a task to call the API endpoint you created, passing relevant incident data (like the affected service or cloud region) in the request payload.

For instance, an alert for a memory leak in a service could trigger a Rootly workflow. That workflow then calls a webhook that runs an Ansible playbook to perform a safe, rolling restart of the problematic pods, resolving the issue in minutes without manual intervention.

Can Rootly Trigger Kubernetes Rollbacks Automatically?

Yes, Rootly can orchestrate automated Kubernetes rollbacks through its workflow engine. This transforms what is often a high-stress, manual process into a swift, automated action that dramatically reduces your MTTR.

Here’s how it works:

1. A monitoring tool detects a spike in errors after a new deployment and creates an incident in Rootly.
2. A Rootly workflow, configured to trigger for this specific application or deployment, initiates automatically.
3. The workflow runs a task—such as a "Run Shell Command" or a webhook—that executes a kubectl rollout undo deployment/your-deployment-name command against the correct Kubernetes cluster.

In addition to rollbacks, Rootly can automate a wide variety of other Kubernetes remediation actions, including:

• Scaling deployments up or down to handle changes in traffic.
• Restarting specific pods that have become unresponsive.
• Cordoning a node that is reporting issues to prevent new pods from being scheduled on it.

You can build these and other custom actions into your incident workflows to create a comprehensive library of automated remediation scenarios, from stopping malicious processes to quarantining phishing emails [6].

The Future is AI-Driven: Building Trust in Self-Healing Systems

Artificial intelligence is elevating automated remediation, moving it from simple, pre-defined scripts toward intelligent, adaptive responses that can cut MTTR by 70% or more [7]. However, the biggest hurdle for many organizations is trusting an AI to make changes in a production environment.

As Duncan Winn, VP of SRE at Zscaler, has noted, it is critical to implement "guardrails" to protect production when using AI-driven remediation [8]. Rootly provides these guardrails directly within its workflows. You can configure a workflow to analyze an issue and propose a remediation step but require a human to click "approve" before it's executed. This human-in-the-loop approach allows teams to verify the AI's proposed action, building trust and confidence while still benefiting from automation's speed.

Conclusion

Rootly empowers engineering teams to build sophisticated, self-healing systems by connecting incident response directly to their IaC and Kubernetes infrastructure. With flexible and powerful workflows, you can automate everything from escalations and communication to complex remediation tasks like executing Ansible playbooks and triggering Kubernetes rollbacks.

This modern approach to incident management not only slashes MTTR and reduces operational overhead but also builds a more reliable and resilient infrastructure. By leveraging Rootly's advanced Workflows 2.0 engine, your team can finally move from constantly fighting fires to building better, more robust systems.

Ready to see how Rootly can transform your incident management? Book a demo today.

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