From Manual Recovery to Modern Resilience
Optimising Disaster Recovery and Observability on AWS
The Client
A major UK energy organisation with a specialist commercial services division supporting large-scale industrial and enterprise customers sought to modernise its cloud operations.
With cloud adoption maturing across the organisation, the client wanted to establish stronger foundations for disaster recovery, performance monitoring, and database governance – creating a repeatable model for future application delivery.
The Challenge
The client engaged Cloud Elemental to enhance the platform’s disaster recovery (DR) posture, improve infrastructure observability, and audit database operations. The goal was to reduce operational risk and increase confidence in the platform’s stability, particularly in the event of an incident or recovery scenario.
Database Access and Security
The client required an in-depth audit of one of its core databases to ensure alignment with industry standards for security and performance.
Limited Observability
Monitoring relied primarily on basic cloud-native telemetry tools and lacked integration with existing incident management systems – limiting visibility and slowing triage during incidents.
Disaster Recovery Gaps
The client wanted to create automated DR playbooks and validation processes to ensure that Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) were consistently achievable, reducing business impact.
Our Approach
Cloud Elemental worked closely with the client throughout the engagement, starting with discovery workshops and technical audits to assess the current-state architecture, tooling, and workflows.
Assessment
Conducted discovery workshops and technical audits to assess current-state architecture, tooling, and workflows.
Identified the absence of automated DR testing and scheduled simulations.
Found incomplete DR documentation and a lack of confidence in current RTOs.
Highlighted gaps in monitoring, particularly across infrastructure components.
Reviewed database cloning and key management processes that introduced operational risk.
Design
Defined the future-state architecture to strengthen DR, observability, and database management.
Outlined DR flows using AWS-native services and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC).
Created recovery playbooks, process documentation, and runbooks to standardise testing.
Designed scalable improvements that aligned with existing systems and compliance frameworks.
Implementation
Delivered automated pipelines to orchestrate recovery and environment provisioning.
Integrated monitoring and infrastructure updates with minimal operational disruption.
Established scheduled DR testing cycles to validate recovery success and improve confidence.
Implemented database automation to enhance security and efficiency.
Enablement
Produced a detailed DR playbook and comprehensive documentation.
Delivered knowledge-sharing sessions with internal teams to transfer ownership.
Embedded new operational processes for continuous validation and improvement.
Ensured the client’s engineers could confidently maintain and evolve the solution.
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Our Solution
Our tailored recommendations enabled the client to automate recovery, unify observability, and enforce secure, scalable database practices, all whilst leveraging cloud-native tooling and integrating seamlessly with their existing enterprise systems.
Here’s how we did it:
Disaster Recovery Enhancements
The client wanted a reliable, repeatable DR process that reduced risk and could be tested regularly with minimal manual effort.
Introduced AWS Backup for automated snapshot creation and lifecycle management.
Developed custom recovery playbooks and supporting scripts to standardise DR procedures.
Created Infrastructure-as-Code modules to enable repeatable infrastructure deployment in DR scenarios.
Established regular DR testing cycles to validate recovery processes and improve confidence in RTOs.
Observability Improvements
Improving visibility across the platform was a key goal, enabling the team to identify and resolve issues faster through integrated, real-time insights.
Integrated an advanced monitoring solution (Dynatrace) for deep infrastructure and application visibility.
Streamlined incident triage by linking monitoring alerts to the organisation’s incident management system through automated workflows.
Built centralised dashboards to provide clear, actionable views of platform health and performance trends.
Database Security & Monitoring
The engagement also focused on strengthening database security and auditability to support compliance and performance objectives.
Implemented a self-service mechanism for secure, time-limited access to production databases.
Automated database cloning for DR testing and non-production environments.
Replaced legacy encryption processes with customer-managed key management systems.
Delivered a detailed audit report highlighting key findings and actionable recommendations for improvement.
Process Improvements
Finally, Cloud Elemental worked with the client to refine day-to-day processes and embed sustainable operational improvements.
Reduced manual steps in DR simulations, allowing for more frequent and reliable testing.
Improved auditability of database access and encryption activities.
Enabled engineers to respond faster to incidents through clearer alerts and integrated tooling.
Established a foundation for continuous improvement by codifying processes and infrastructure.
Our Results
By implementing automated DR, unified observability, and secure database workflows, the client significantly reduced operational risk while improving agility and control across its cloud estate.
Operational Risk Reduced
Regular, automated DR simulations increased confidence in recovery outcomes and reduced downtime risk
Improved Observability
Engineering teams gained real-time visibility and actionable insights for faster troubleshooting
Increased Security & Auditability
Temporary access workflows and automated encryption management reduced compliance risk
Faster Delivery Cycles
Standardised infrastructure provisioning and cloning processes improved agility and reliability
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