And it's OSS: https://github.com/Netflix/SimianArmy/wiki/Chaos-Monkey
In What I Wish I Had Known Before Scaling Uber [video]Netflix
SimianArmy
Java2012–2022
Netflix / SimianArmy · Archived
SimianArmy
Tools for keeping your cloud operating in top form. Chaos Monkey is a resiliency tool that helps applications tolerate random instance failures.
31Distinct people
32Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
8KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Tools for keeping your cloud operating in top form. Chaos Monkey is a resiliency tool that helps applications tolerate random instance failures.
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
As always I recommend people practice Chaos Engineering [0] to minimize the impact of such events. Even if the complexity of cross-region failover is to expensive, having some…
Slippery_John used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 4:00:59 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year32 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2012-07-31 00:21:36 UTC to 2022-03-16 06:46:22 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 10 | 3 | 7 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
PROJECT STATUS: RETIRED
The Simian Army project is no longer actively maintained. Some of the Simian
Army functionality has been moved to other Netflix projects:
A newer version of Chaos Monkey is available as a standalone service.
Swabbie is a new standalone service that will replace the functionality provided by Janitor Monkey.
Conformity Monkey functionality will be rolled into other Spinnaker backend services.
DESCRIPTION
The Simian Army is a suite of tools for keeping your cloud operating in top
form. Chaos Monkey, the first member, is a resiliency tool that helps ensure
that your applications can tolerate random instance failures
DETAILS
Please see the wiki.
SUPPORT
Simian Army Google group
Because the project is no longer maintained, there is a good chance that nobody will be able to answer a support question.
LICENSE
Copyright 2012-2016 Netflix, Inc.
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in
compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is
distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or
implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the
License.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
10 sourcesThere is a chaos monkey that does that: https://github.com/Netflix/SimianArmy/wiki/Chaos-Monkey
In What is Janitor Monkey? (2015)What is Janitor Monkey? (2015)
32 points · Open discussionChaos Monkey is actually a reference to a tool that I think netflix released? huh. yeah, I see it on github:
https://github.com/Netflix/SimianArmy
I remember someone giving a talk on it in the mid aughts, and I think it's a wonderful way to describe what happens in real-world networks and systems.
>Assuming our hardware was reliable was a mistake. Writing code so that it's chaos-monkey-proof is a great step forward.
Hah. Part of it is that I am the guy who is responsible for keeping that multi-year uptime (and on most of my own hardware, this is mostly a matter of vetting updates, security and otherwise, and implementing workarounds) - but I like to point out that building a system that can deal with the chaos monkey is... well, it's way harder than throwing up a reliable SQL server with a reliable backup and someone like me on pager.
Read the rest
Especially if you want to beat the "the system fucks up once a year" record that even mediocre server-grade hardware can achieve.
That said, if you can write such software, I agree that the end result is better, I mean, like half my skillset is in Linux/BSD and environments where reboots cost big bucks, but I'm not going to cry about turning in my pager. I'm just saying, it's hard and most people screw it up and end up building something less reliable than well-managed hardware with a competent oncall.
>As for the generational thing... meh, we're ugly. People like hiring the beautiful folks. Startup folks think they're immortal, having some greying old fart in the corner wheezing away reminds them that they're not.
Eh, I think that most of the startups that only hire pretty people also tend to pay such that they can't afford someone who is good who has a few decades of experience, so it might be more of a budgetary/age thing; young people, generally, will work for less.
I think it might also be a San Francisco thing. The fitness of the people interviewing me goes up and the wages they offer me go down when I head up that direction.
I think he talks about Chaos Monkey: http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/07/chaos-monkey-released-in...
GitHub: https://github.com/Netflix/SimianArmy
In U.S. Team Wins First Place at International Math Olympiad> Are there analogies in other industries to this approach?
https://github.com/Netflix/SimianArmy/wiki/Chaos-Monkey
In Automated to Death (2009)I totally disagree.
Sure, usually the most graceful thing to do is exit and hope a human fixes it. But that's usual because the usual condition is that sudden failure is NBD and a human is right there to screw with it.
That's becoming less common, though. When software was mostly something running on a PC doing some boring office task, reliability didn't matter. But as software is running our airplanes, our cars, our medical devices, and even, as with implanted pacemakers and insulin pumps, our bodies, then reliability gos from NBD to BFD.
We see the way forward with things Chaos Monkey [1] and crash-only software [2] and the sort of design for failure you see in things like Agent supervisor hierarchies [3], where the way to reliability is through designing for failure recovery from the beginning and testing thoroughly to make sure it rea
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Wow, a real-life chaos monkey!
https://github.com/Netflix/SimianArmy/wiki/Chaos-Monkey
In An administrator accidentally deleted the production database