Chapter 1. Disaster scenarios in IdM
Chapter 1. Disaster scenarios in IdM Prepare and respond to various disaster scenarios in Identity Management (IdM) systems that affect servers, data, or entire infrastructures. Table 1.1. Disaster scenarios in IdM Disaster type Example causes How to prepare How to respond Server loss : The IdM deployment loses one or several servers. Hardware malfunction Preparing for server loss with replication Recovering a single server with replication Data loss : IdM data is unexpectedly modified on a server, and the change is propagated to other servers. A user accidentally deletes data A software bug modifies data Preparing for data loss with VM snapshots Preparing for data loss with IdM backups Recovering from data loss with VM snapshots Recovering from data loss with IdM backups Managing data loss Total infrastructure loss : All IdM servers or Certificate Authority (CA) replicas are lost with no VM snapshots or data backups available. Lack of off-site backups or redundancy prevents recovery after a failure or disaster. Preparing for data loss with VM snapshots This situation is a total loss. Warning A total loss scenario occurs when all Certificate Authority (CA) replicas or all IdM servers are lost, and no virtual machine (VM) snapshots or backups are available for recovery. Without CA replicas, the IdM environment cannot deploy additional replicas or rebuild itself, making recovery impossible. To avoid such scenarios, ensure backups are stored off-site, maintain multiple geographically redundant CA replicas, and connect each replica to at least two others.