In a recently published paper AWS outlines how organizations can use the AWS Fault Injection Service (FIS) to support DORA requirements around scenario-based testing. Using FIS provides a structured, iterative process of identifying failure scenarios, planning and executing chaos engineering experiments, reporting on the results, and using the information learned to improve operational resilience.
Applying the AWS resilience lifecycle framework for DORA scenario testing
AWS has developed a resilience lifecycle framework that outlines five key stages. At each stage you can use strategies, services, and mechanisms to improve your resilience posture. The stages are:
- Set objectives
- Design & implement
- Evaluate & test
- Operate
- Respond & learn.
The Evaluate and test phase of the framework verifies that the system meets its resilience requirements. AWS recommends a five-stage failure scenario-based approach to perform this validation:
- Stage 1: Identify failure scenarios
- Stage 2: Plan failure testing
- Stage 3: Execute failure scenarios
- Stage 4: Report on scenario testing
- Stage 5: Remediate resilience issues
The paper explores these five stages in detail.
Concluding, the paper says that, by using AWS FIS and an iterative chaos engineering process, organizations can validate systematically system resilience for DORA’s scenario-based testing requirements. By methodically identifying, planning, executing, and reporting on failure scenarios, organizations can uncover hidden issues, assess, and improve their operational resilience posture.
What is chaos engineering?
AWS says that chaos engineering is a methodical approach for testing and validating the resilience of complex systems by deliberately introducing failures and disruptions. Its purpose goes beyond checking known conditions and instead uncover unknown weaknesses and vulnerabilities that only manifest under real-world complex scenarios. This approach can reveal flaws that conventional testing methods, such as functional and integration tests, often miss.
