# How SRE Teams Use Fault Trees to Root Out Latent Defects

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-site-reliability-podcast-with-fexingo-sre-uptime-and-production-engineering-7871923/how-sre-teams-use-fault-trees-to-root-out-latent-defects
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-site-reliability-podcast-with-fexingo-sre-uptime-and-production-engineering-7871923/how-sre-teams-use-fault-trees-to-root-out-latent-defects.md
Podcast: [The Site Reliability Podcast with Fexingo: SRE, Uptime, and Production Engineering](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-site-reliability-podcast-with-fexingo-sre-uptime-and-production-engineering-7871923)
Published: 2026-07-15T22:19:40+00:00
Episode link: https://audio.fexingo.com/business/the-site-reliability-podcast/episode-0113.mp3
Audio file: https://audio.fexingo.com/business/the-site-reliability-podcast/episode-0113.mp3
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Duration seconds: 530

## Resource

In Episode 113 of The Site Reliability Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore how fault tree analysis — a technique borrowed from aerospace and nuclear engineering — is being adapted by SRE teams to uncover latent defects before they cause incidents. They walk through a real-world case from a major cloud provider where a fault tree traced a seemingly random database failover back to a misconfigured kernel parameter buried three layers deep in the dependency chain. Along the way, they discuss the difference between fault trees and postmortems, how to handle overlapping failures, and why mapping 'what-if' paths can cut mean time to resolution by as much as 40 percent. #FaultTreeAnalysis #SRE #SiteReliabilityEngineering #LatentDefects #IncidentPrevention #RootCauseAnalysis #CloudInfrastructure #DatabaseFailover #DependencyMapping #FailureModes #ProductionEngineering #Uptime #ReliabilityEngineering #SystemsThinking #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #Technology #TechOps Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo

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