Exploring System Resiliency and Supporting Design Methods

Abstract: This paper provides a survey of the industry perspective on System Resiliency and Resiliency design approaches and briefly touches on Organizational Resiliency topics. Beginning with a composite definition of Resiliency, System Capabilities, Adversities, and the Resiliency Life-cycle the document then covers Operational Response Timelines, Failure Sources and Classifications. Next, Design for Resiliency is discussed with an introduction to Systems Theory and a review of Trade-off Analysis and Resiliency Dependencies. Then more than a dozen Resiliency Design Patterns are included for the reader to consider for their own solutioning. Supporting non-functional design topics including Availability, Performance, Security, Reliability as well as Reliability Allocation using Reliability Block Diagrams are also covered. Additionally, Failure Mode and Effect Analysis is reviewed, and a Resiliency Maturity Model is discussed. Finally, several Resiliency Design Examples are presented along with a set of recommendations on how to apply System Resiliency concepts and methods in an IT environment.