Automate recovery for components constrained to a single location

Automating recovery processes is crucial for ensuring that workloads can be quickly restored to their operational state, especially when components are situated in a single Availability Zone or on-premises. This minimizes downtime and enhances the overall resilience of the application.

Best Practices

Implement Automated Recovery Strategies

• Identify critical components that operate in a single Availability Zone or on-premises and determine their recovery objectives (RTO and RPO).
• Utilize Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools (e.g., AWS CloudFormation, Terraform) to define and deploy your infrastructure quickly and consistently.
• Develop automated scripts or use AWS services like AWS Lambda to initiate recovery processes, such as rebuilding instances and restoring data.
• Set up monitoring and alerting using services like Amazon CloudWatch to detect failures and trigger the automated recovery workflows.
• Regularly test your recovery processes to ensure they function as intended and meet your recovery objectives.
• Document your recovery procedures and ensure your team is trained to handle recovery processes seamlessly.

Questions to ask your team

• What processes are in place to monitor the health of components limited to a single location?
• How do you ensure that data is backed up and can be restored quickly in the event of a failure?
• Have you documented the recovery procedures for rebuilding workloads constrained to a single location?
• How frequently do you test your recovery and rebuild processes to ensure they meet your defined recovery objectives?
• Are there any automated tools in place to facilitate the rapid rebuilding of your workload?
• What strategies do you employ to minimize downtime during the rebuild process?

Who should be doing this?

Cloud Architect

• Design fault-isolated architectures that limit impact of failures.
• Evaluate the use of Availability Zones and regions for workload deployment.
• Establish recovery objectives and strategies for components constrained to a single location.

DevOps Engineer

• Implement automation scripts to enable quick recovery of workloads.
• Set up monitoring and alerting to detect failures within isolated boundaries.
• Conduct regular testing of automated recovery processes.

Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)

• Work with development teams to ensure fault isolation is included in design considerations.
• Analyze service failures to improve reliability and recovery processes.
• Document incidents and recovery procedures to enhance operational knowledge.

Quality Assurance Engineer

• Test the recoverability of components under various failure scenarios.
• Validate that workloads meet defined recovery objectives.
• Ensure documentation is in place for recovery processes.

Operations Manager

• Oversee the implementation of recovery strategies across the team.
• Coordinate incident response and recovery activities.
• Review and update the recovery plans as necessary.

What evidence shows this is happening in your organization?

• Automated Recovery Playbook: A comprehensive playbook outlining the steps to automate recovery for components constrained to a single Availability Zone or on-premises. It includes procedures for backup, rebuild, and validation of workloads to meet defined recovery objectives.
• Disaster Recovery Strategy Plan: A strategic document that establishes guidelines for automating recovery processes in a single location. It details roles, responsibilities, and processes to ensure swift recovery of affected components during failures.
• Fault Isolation and Recovery Checklist: An actionable checklist ensuring all critical recovery automations are in place for workloads limited to a single location. It includes verification steps for regular testing and updates to recovery procedures.
• Recovery Automation Dashboard: A visual dashboard that monitors the status of automated recovery processes, providing real-time insights into the health of components, recovery times, and compliance with recovery objectives.
• Cloud Recovery Architecture Diagram: A detailed diagram illustrating the fault isolation strategy and recovery architecture for the workload, showcasing components, their interdependencies, and the automated recovery workflow.

Cloud Services

AWS

• Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling: Automates the addition or removal of EC2 instances in response to demand, supporting automated recovery and ensuring that your application meets its performance requirements even within a single Availability Zone.
• AWS CloudFormation: Allows you to model and provision AWS resources in your cloud environment, enabling a complete rebuild of your workload through infrastructure as code.
• AWS Elastic Load Balancing: Distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets, such as EC2 instances, ensuring that your application remains available and resilient by redirecting traffic in case of instance failures.
• Amazon RDS Automated Backups: Offers automated backup capabilities for your databases, allowing for recovery to a specific point in time within your recovery objectives.

Azure

• Azure Availability Zones: Provides a high-availability option, allowing you to run your applications and storage in separate physical locations to prevent downtime in case of a failure.
• Azure Resource Manager (ARM): Enables you to automate the deployment and management of applications through templates, making it easier to restore your applications following a failure.
• Azure Backup: Provides backup and restore capabilities designed to enable recovery objectives through automation and integration with Azure services.

Google Cloud Platform

• Google Cloud Load Balancing: Distributes traffic across multiple instances and regions, ensuring availability and reliability in case of instance failure.
• Google Cloud Deployment Manager: Allows you to create, configure, and deploy Google Cloud resources using templates, enabling automation of recovery processes.
• Google Cloud Backup and DR: Provides backup and disaster recovery capabilities that help to automate the recovery of workloads within your defined recovery objectives.