Running Demo

Running the Demo

This skill drives the full demo using Playwright MCP for browser control. Execute each step — don't just describe them.

Setup

# AKS is a private cluster — kubectl from your local workstation won't work without VPN/jumpbox.
# Use `Invoke-AksCommand` (wraps `az aks command invoke` for human-operator polling/diagnostics).
# The SRE Agent uses the built-in RunKubectl* system tools; this helper is for human operators.
. .\scripts\_aks-helpers.ps1
$rg  = (azd env get-value RESOURCE_GROUP)
$aks = (azd env get-value AKS_CLUSTER_NAME)
$pg  = (az postgres flexible-server list -g $rg --query '[0].name' -o tsv)
$r = Invoke-AksCommand -ResourceGroup $rg -ClusterName $aks `
    -Command "kubectl get svc -n ingress-nginx ingress-nginx-controller -o jsonpath='{.status.loadBalancer.ingress[0].ip}'" -Quiet
$ip = ($r.logs -replace '[^\d\.]','').Trim()
$storeUrl = "http://$ip"
$agentUrl = (azd env get-value AGENT_PORTAL_URL)  # deep-links to this agent's blade — sign in if prompted

When observing or prompting the SRE Agent, use its built-in RunKubectlReadCommand and RunKubectlWriteCommand tools for Kubernetes.

Scenario 1: Database Outage

Step 1: Show healthy state

1. Use Playwright MCP to navigate to $storeUrl
2. Take a screenshot — show products loading, status bar says "ALL SYSTEMS OPERATIONAL"
3. Navigate to $storeUrl/api/health — show "status":"healthy","db_connected":true

Step 2: Break it

.\.github\skills\running-demo\scripts\break-sql.ps1

Wait 30 seconds for the app to notice.

Step 3: Show the break in the browser

1. Navigate to $storeUrl — should show "SERVICE DISRUPTION" overlay
2. Take a screenshot — this is the degraded UI the audience should see
3. Navigate to $storeUrl/api/health — show "status":"unhealthy","db_connected":false

Step 4: Watch the SRE Agent

1. Navigate to $agentUrl — the agent portal
2. Look for a new incident thread (postgres-unreachable scheduled-query alert, routed to the zava-database response plan)
3. The agent should investigate and run az postgres flexible-server start
4. Poll PostgreSQL state every 60s — let the agent do its thing, do NOT run the fix script:

   az postgres flexible-server show -g $rg -n $pg --query state -o tsv
   

5. Wait until state = "Ready" (typically 3-5 min)
6. There's now one postgres-unreachable alert for both DB scenarios, with the zava-database response plan merge disabled (the agent won't fold a second incident into the first thread). Both scenarios share that single rule, so Azure Monitor won't emit a fresh alert instance while the previous one is still Fired/Acknowledged. To keep back-to-back runs clean, the database-incidents runbook has the agent close the postgres-unreachable alert as its final step once recovery is verified — so by the time you start Scenario 2 it should already be resolved and the new break dispatches fresh. (Fallback if the agent didn't close it: autoMitigate resolves it ~15-30 min after recovery, or close it yourself in the portal Alerts blade.) The agent diagnoses each from ARM state (Stopped → restart; Ready but unreachable → NetworkPolicy/NSG).

Step 5: Show recovery

1. Wait 15s after PG is Ready for pods to reconnect
2. Navigate to $storeUrl — products should load again
3. Take a screenshot — show recovery

Do not run fix-sql.ps1 as part of the demo. It exists for post-demo cleanup or developer iteration only — running it during the demo invalidates the result. If the agent doesn't fix the incident, that is the result; show it and move on.

Scenario 2: Network Partition

Step 1: Show healthy state

1. Navigate to $storeUrl — confirm healthy
2. Take screenshot

Step 2: Break it

Heads-up if you just ran Scenario 1: both DB scenarios share the one postgres-unreachable alert. The database-incidents runbook has the agent close that alert as its final remediation step, so it should already be resolved and this break will dispatch a fresh investigation. If the agent didn't close it (still Fired), close it in the portal Alerts blade or wait for autoMitigate (~15-30 min) — otherwise Azure Monitor dedupes this break into the still-open instance and the agent won't dispatch.

.\.github\skills\running-demo\scripts\break-network.ps1

Wait 30 seconds.

Step 3: Show the break

1. Navigate to $storeUrl — should show "SERVICE DISRUPTION" with ETIMEDOUT errors
2. Take screenshot — note: error says "timeout" not "connection refused" (server is up but unreachable)

Step 4: Watch the agent

1. Check SRE Agent portal for investigation
2. Agent needs to find the K8s NetworkPolicy with RunKubectlReadCommand using kubectl get networkpolicy -n zava-demo -o yaml, then remove it with RunKubectlWriteCommand using kubectl delete networkpolicy database-tier-isolation -n zava-demo - this is harder than Scenario 1 and may take longer
3. Poll for NetworkPolicy removal (the AKS API server is private — go through ARM):

   Invoke-AksCommand -ResourceGroup $rg -ClusterName $aks -Command "kubectl get networkpolicy -n zava-demo"
   

4. Do not run fix-network.ps1 as part of the demo — same rule as Scenario 1: the script is post-demo cleanup, not an agent-failure fallback.

Step 5: Show recovery

1. Navigate to $storeUrl — products load
2. Take screenshot

Scenario 3: Missing Index

Step 1: Show healthy state

1. Navigate to $storeUrl — confirm healthy

Step 2: Break it

# Drops idx_products_category_name AND idx_products_category (the single-column
# index alone is enough to keep queries under the 30ms alert threshold via
# index range scan + sort, so both must go to force seq_scan). Also rolls the
# api deployment to clear PG plan cache + restart the OTel exporter, then
# verifies AppRequests telemetry is flowing before launching the load Job.
# Variants are seeded automatically on first deploy (50 originals + 120,000
# size/color/edition variants from seed.js), so this is a single command.
.\.github\skills\running-demo\scripts\break-db-perf.ps1

If the script aborts with "Telemetry pipeline is dead", the api pods stopped sending AppRequests (we've seen the OTel exporter wedge silently after 4h+ uptime). The script's recommended kubectl rollout restart deploy/zava-api will normally fix it; pass -SkipTelemetryCheck to bypass on a brand-new deploy where the api hasn't had time to send any telemetry yet.

Step 3: Show degraded performance

1. Navigate to $storeUrl/api/diagnostics
2. Look at scan_stats — products table should show index_usage_pct: 0 with high seq_scan count
3. Take screenshot
4. (break-db-perf.ps1 already launched a 15-min in-cluster Kubernetes Job (zava-cat-load in the zava-demo namespace) that hammers /api/products/category/<X> over the cluster-internal Service DNS. This pushes real traffic past the alert's 30ms threshold — the 1Hz __probe is excluded by the alert KQL. The Job auto-cleans 60s after completion via ttlSecondsAfterFinished; fix-db-perf.ps1 also deletes it explicitly. Run with -NoLoad to skip.)

Step 4: Watch agent

1. Monitor SRE Agent portal - it should detect slow response times via App Insights, identify the missing index, and run CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY in-cluster via bin/run-sql.js (RunKubectlWriteCommand executes kubectl exec -n zava-demo deploy/zava-api -- node bin/run-sql.js "<SQL>"; the helper reuses the pod's workload identity)
2. Do not run fix-db-perf.ps1 as part of the demo — same rule as the other scenarios: the script is post-demo cleanup, not an agent-failure fallback.

Step 5: Show recovery

1. Verify the index has been recreated by reading the diagnostics endpoint (cleaner than trying to round-trip a quoted SQL literal through PowerShell → az aks command invoke → kubectl exec → node argv — embedded quotes don't survive that chain reliably on Windows):

   $diag = Invoke-RestMethod "$storeUrl/api/diagnostics"
   $diag.indexes | Where-Object { $_.index_name -eq 'idx_products_category_name' }
   ($diag.scan_stats | Where-Object { $_.table_name -eq 'products' }).index_usage_pct
   

   The index row should be present and index_usage_pct should climb back to ~95%+ (mirrors the direct-state checks used in Scenario 1 (az postgres flexible-server show --query state) and Scenario 2 (kubectl get networkpolicy)).
2. Navigate to $storeUrl — fast loading

Scenario 4: Bad Deploy / Rollback

Step 1: Show healthy state

1. Navigate to $storeUrl — confirm healthy, products load
2. Take screenshot

Step 2: Break it

# Ships a bad config rollout: kubectl set env deployment/zava-api FAULT_INJECT=500.
# This mutates the pod template -> a NEW rollout revision (the deployment signal),
# and GET /api/products starts returning HTTP 500. The liveness AND readiness probes
# both hit /livez (and /api/health stays green too), so pods stay Running and only the app route regresses.
# The 1Hz in-cluster self-probe hits /api/products, so the 5xx signal builds with no
# external load. Verifies AppRequests telemetry is flowing first (-SkipTelemetryCheck
# to bypass on a brand-new deploy).
.\.github\skills\running-demo\scripts\break-bad-deploy.ps1

If the script aborts with "Telemetry pipeline is dead", the api pods stopped sending AppRequests; kubectl rollout restart deploy/zava-api -n zava-demo normally fixes it, or pass -SkipTelemetryCheck.

Step 3: Show the break

1. Navigate to $storeUrl/api/products — returns HTTP 500
2. Navigate to $storeUrl/api/health — still "status":"healthy","db_connected":true (the deploy regressed the app route, not the DB). Take a screenshot to make the point: platform-healthy, app-broken.

Step 4: Watch the agent

1. Check the SRE Agent portal for a new incident from Zava-http-5xx-errors
2. The agent should rule out the DB/network/slow-query conditions, then correlate the 5xx spike with the recent rollout and roll back:

   Invoke-AksCommand -ResourceGroup $rg -ClusterName $aks -Command "kubectl rollout history deployment/zava-api -n zava-demo"
   

3. Remediation is kubectl rollout undo deployment/zava-api -n zava-demo (rollback to the previous good revision)
4. Do not run fix-bad-deploy.ps1 as part of the demo — same rule as the other scenarios: the script is post-demo cleanup, not an agent-failure fallback.

Step 5: Show recovery

1. Navigate to $storeUrl/api/products — returns 200 again
2. Navigate to $storeUrl — products load; take screenshot

Scenario 5: Compound Independent Faults

This proof-of-concept scenario overlaps Scenario 3 and Scenario 4 by 90 seconds. It demonstrates how to compare two nearby alerts before deciding whether they share a cause.

Step 1: Confirm healthy state

1. Navigate to $storeUrl and $storeUrl/api/health
2. Confirm products load and the database is connected

Step 2: Break both paths

.\.github\skills\running-demo\scripts\break-compound.ps1

The script drops both category indexes, starts the sustained category load, waits 90 seconds, then deploys FAULT_INJECT=500.

Step 3: Verify the overlap

1. $storeUrl/api/products returns HTTP 500 while /api/health remains healthy.
2. Query /api/diagnostics; both category indexes are absent and product scans are sequential.
3. Confirm the zava-cat-load Job is active through Invoke-AksCommand.
4. Expect both Zava-products-query-slow and Zava-http-5xx-errors within 5-10 minutes.

Step 4: Review the investigation

Confirm that the investigation compares the available evidence:

• 5xx failures are app-local (localhost:3001) and correlate with the rollout.
• PostgreSQL CPU/latency rises, but its slow queries succeed and create no failed PG dependencies.
• Zava-db-cpu-saturation is present but disabled.

Alert timestamps identify temporal overlap, not causation. Use request, dependency, deployment, and PostgreSQL telemetry to establish whether a mechanism is shared.

This scenario is intentionally narrow. It demonstrates one correlation approach and does not represent every incident pattern or guarantee a particular model outcome.

Step 5: Cleanup

Let the SRE Agent remediate during a demo. For post-demo cleanup or test teardown:

.\.github\skills\running-demo\scripts\fix-compound.ps1

Verify /api/products returns 200, both indexes exist, and the load Job is gone.

Chat demo: interrogate the hub firewall (network device)

No break needed — this shows the agent treating the hub Azure Firewall as a queryable "network device" in the hub-and-spoke topology.

1. Open the agent chat ($agentUrl) and ask:

   "Inspect the hub Azure Firewall: summarize its egress allow-list (rule collections), and query the AZFW* Log Analytics tables for anything denied for the agent subnet in the last hour."

2. Expect the agent to read the firewall policy over ARM (az network firewall policy ..., covered by its Reader role) and run KQL against AZFWApplicationRule / AZFWNetworkRule.
3. Optional follow-up — "Is the firewall in the path between the app and PostgreSQL?" The correct answer is no: it gates only the agent's own egress; the app↔PG path is governed by the platform-spoke NSG and the in-cluster Kubernetes NetworkPolicy. This confirms the agent has the topology boundary right.

This is a read/diagnostic demonstration, not a break/fix — the firewall gates the agent's own egress, so breaking it would disable the agent itself.

Watching the SRE Agent

In a separate shell, view investigation progress through the data-plane API:

.\scripts\watch-agent.ps1                              # list all threads
.\scripts\watch-agent.ps1 -Show -Title slow            # details for latest matching incident
.\scripts\watch-agent.ps1 -Tail -Title slow            # poll for new messages until Resolved/Closed/Mitigated

Investigation time varies by scenario and environment. Use -Tail to follow progress before deciding whether manual cleanup is needed.

Playwright MCP Usage

Use these Playwright MCP tools throughout:

• browser_navigate — go to URLs
• browser_snapshot — see page content (use to verify text like "SERVICE DISRUPTION" or "healthy")
• browser_screenshot — capture visual state
• browser_click — interact with elements if needed

If Playwright MCP is not available, fall back to port-forward via az aks command invoke + curl:

# Test the API directly via the public ingress (still public — only the cluster API server is private)
Invoke-RestMethod "$storeUrl/api/health"
# Or exec inside an api pod for internal checks:
Invoke-AksCommand -ResourceGroup $rg -ClusterName $aks -Command "kubectl exec -n zava-demo deploy/zava-api -- wget -qO- http://localhost:3001/api/health"