Security engineering · Specialist service
Resilience and failover testing — Resilience Testing
The presence of a standby component does not prove that failover will work. We prepare controlled tests of selected failures to assess infrastructure behaviour, technical procedures and monitoring.
Service scope
Resilience testing
Scenarios may include loss of a component, link or cluster node. Before execution, we define start, stop and rollback conditions and the acceptable impact on services. Together with SOC/NOC, we assess availability, event detection and escalation, then translate findings into a resilience improvement plan.
Failure scenario design
We select the component to disable, the expected system behaviour and the scope of monitoring for dependent services.
Control conditions
We establish participant readiness, constraints, stopping criteria and the procedure for returning to the pre-test state.
Execution and observation
We carry out the approved scenario, record infrastructure response and analyse the impact on availability and monitoring.
Assessment and improvements
We compare results against criteria, identify ambiguities in procedures and assign recommended changes to the relevant teams.
Project deliverables
What will your team receive?
- Approved scenario with stop and rollback conditions.
- Record of the test sequence and key measurements.
- Assessment of failover, availability and alerting.
- Improvement plan and proposed reassessment scope.
Delivery conditions
What do we agree before starting?
- Service owner approval of the agreed test impact.
- Availability of administrators, suppliers and required resources.
- Confirmed procedure for restoring the environment after the exercise.
How we work
From understanding the need to verifying the result.
Preparation and approval
We agree the scenario, safety conditions, participants and expected system behaviour.
Controlled test
We perform the test, observe its impact and initiate the stop procedure if the agreed criteria are met.
Analysis and improvement
We document results, organise recommendations and agree how to verify the effectiveness of improvements.
Clear responsibilities
What is already included, and what do we extend?
NOC provides operational oversight, while Enterprise includes agreed representative recovery tests. Extensive failure exercises, whole-site tests and custom scenarios are extensions. Checking backup status alone does not replace a recovery test.
Before making a decision
Questions about resilience testing
Does testing have to take place in production?
Not always. We choose the environment according to the objective and acceptable risk, and explain the limitations of conclusions drawn from non-production tests.
What if failover does not work correctly?
The previously agreed stop and rollback conditions apply. The failure is documented along with its impact and the tasks needed for improvement.
Does a redundancy test also check backups?
Only if the relevant scenario is included. Switching between components and recovering data are different mechanisms that require appropriate criteria.
Related expertise
Connect activities that complement each other.
The next step
Let us define a scope that makes sense for your organisation.
Let us discuss your environment, priorities and team responsibilities. We will use this to define the work, required access and service conditions.