Enterprise Operations, Disaster Recovery, and Resiliency
Enterprise Operations, Disaster Recovery, and Resiliency
This module describes the operational practices, resiliency patterns, and disaster recovery strategies that support the Enterprise Hybrid HCI Platform. It provides a structured approach for maintaining service availability across the Primary Data Center, Disaster Recovery Data Center, and Out of Region DR site.
The objective is to create a reliable, repeatable, and testable operational model that supports business continuity under normal, degraded, and disaster conditions.
Operational Architecture Overview
Operations span several core responsibilities:
- Platform monitoring and observability
- Configuration and change management
- Backup and data protection
- Vulnerability and patch management
- Logging and security operations
- Capacity planning and resource governance
These responsibilities apply consistently across all tiers, zones, and HCI blocks. Operational teams rely on centralized tools and processes to manage distributed infrastructure.
Operational Foundations
Configuration and Change Management
Operational consistency requires:
- Standardized configuration templates for firewalls, switches, hypervisors, and platform software
- Version controlled infrastructure as code for repeatable deployments
- Approval workflows for changes that impact production
- Automated checks before and after changes to detect drift or misconfiguration
Configuration drift is monitored continuously, and deviations are remediated promptly.
Backup and Data Protection
Backups serve as the last line of defense against data loss, corruption, or compromise.
Key practices:
- Nightly backups of virtual machines, databases, and configuration data
- Point in time recovery for Tier 1 and Tier 2 systems
- Application aware backups for critical workloads
- Encryption of all backup data at rest and in transit
- Replication of backup datasets to the DR DC and Out of Region DR site
Testing of restores is mandatory. A backup is not considered valid until a restore has been verified.
Patch and Vulnerability Management
A structured patch management process ensures a secure baseline.
Core activities:
- Monthly operating system and application patch cycles
- Emergency patching for critical vulnerabilities
- Regular vulnerability scans and remediation workflows
- Integration with SIEM to correlate vulnerabilities with active threats
- Baseline compliance checks for hardened configurations
Patches are tested in non production environments before production rollout when feasible.
Monitoring and Observability
Observability provides real time insight into platform health.
Monitoring includes:
- Infrastructure metrics such as CPU, memory, storage, and network
- Application performance metrics and synthetic checks
- Log ingestion and correlation across all tiers
- Network flow monitoring for east and west visibility
- Automated alerting for threshold or anomaly events
Observability systems must be available across sites to ensure resiliency of monitoring functions during outages.
Resiliency Architecture
The resiliency model spans three data centers:
- Primary DC
- Disaster Recovery DC
- Out of Region DR site
Each site has specific responsibilities and levels of readiness.
Resiliency Tiering Model
Applications and services are assigned to tiers based on business criticality.
Tier 1: Mission Critical
Requirements:
- Minimal downtime
- Minimal data loss
- Synchronous or near synchronous replication
- Automated failover
Examples:
- Identity services
- Critical line of business applications
- Core databases
Tier 2: High Importance
Requirements:
- Tolerates limited downtime
- Near real time or scheduled replication
- Manual or assisted failover
Examples:
- Application middleware
- Web portals
- Moderate criticality databases
Tier 3: Standard Applications
Requirements:
- Standard backup based recovery
- Acceptable data loss within scheduled backup windows
- Recovery based on restoration procedures
Examples:
- Development environments
- Support systems
- Non critical internal applications
Tier assignments drive replication type, backup schedules, and failover priorities.
Failover and Recovery Models
Failover models vary by tier and workload type. The architecture supports several approaches.
Active Passive Failover (Most Common)
- Primary DC hosts production workloads
- DR DC maintains warm or hot standby systems
- Failover initiated by automation or operator runbooks
- Data replication ensures minimal RPO
Active Active Failover (Selective)
- For workloads that support horizontal scaling
- Both Primary and DR DC operate active nodes
- Load balancing and session management determine traffic allocation
Out of Region DR
- Asynchronous replication to geographically distant site
- Minimal always on footprint
- Recovery environment activated only during major events
- DR documentation includes detailed provisioning and scaling steps
Failover Sequence
A standard failover scenario follows these steps:
- Detection of outage or degradation
- Confirmation of failure through monitoring and operational checks
- Activation of failover runbook for impacted workloads
- DNS or load balancer updates to direct traffic to DR DC
- Validation of identity services, application entry points, and database readiness
- Validation of restored services
- Documentation of failover details and lessons learned
The process is tested regularly to ensure reliability.
Disaster Recovery Processes
Formal DR processes provide a structured and auditable approach to recovery.
DR Runbooks
Each application and platform component has a detailed runbook including:
- Failover steps
- Fallback steps
- Verification procedures
- Contact escalation lists
- Dependencies and upstream or downstream integrations
Runbooks are version controlled and updated after each DR exercise.
DR Testing and Exercises
Testing validates readiness and identifies improvements.
Types of testing:
Planned DR Tests
- Controlled failover of selected applications
- Scheduled in advance and communicated to stakeholders
Full Data Center Simulation
- Simulates Primary DC outage
- Activates DR DC for extended periods
- Validates performance and capacity under load
Out of Region DR Simulation
- Validates recovery from catastrophic regional failure
- Tests asynchronous recovery and rapid provisioning
Tabletop Exercises
- Operational and leadership walkthroughs
- Review of procedures without impacting systems
Results of all tests feed continuous improvement cycles.
Multi Site Identity and Platform Operations
Identity, logging, monitoring, and VDI must remain functional throughout an outage.
Identity Services
Identity must be available during failover.
Practices:
- Multi site domain controllers
- Replicated identity provider nodes
- DR ready PKI components
- DNS services prepared for failover
Logging and SIEM
SIEM remains the central source of truth.
- DR DC hosts secondary collectors
- Out of Region site hosts limited log ingestion
- Event forwarding continues across site boundaries
Monitoring
Monitoring systems must:
- Detect failures at Primary DC
- Continue collecting telemetry from DR and Out of Region sites
- Alert operators during failover
Continuous Improvement
Operational maturity grows with iteration.
Key practices:
- Post incident reviews
- Improvement tracking
- Automation of repeated operational tasks
- Documentation updates
- Regular validation of runbooks, backups, and access controls
Implementation Options
The following categories represent common tooling aligned to these patterns.
Backup and Recovery
- Enterprise backup platforms with application aware capabilities
- Replication systems integrated with HCI platforms
- Cloud based archival for long term retention
Monitoring and Observability
- Prometheus and Grafana
- Zabbix
- Enterprise APM tools
- Synthetic monitoring systems
SIEM and Analytics
- Splunk
- Elastic Stack
- Microsoft Sentinel
DR Automation
- Runbook automation platforms
- Infrastructure as code pipelines for rapid provisioning
- DNS and load balancer systems that support automated failover
Summary
Resiliency and DR processes ensure the Enterprise Hybrid HCI Platform remains available under diverse conditions. By combining strong operational foundations, structured tiering models, and multi-site recovery strategies, the architecture delivers predictable and testable continuity for mission critical systems.