Register Operations
Running FERIN registers in production: monitoring, maintenance, scaling, and disaster recovery for reliable service delivery.
Operations Overview
A register is a long-lived system that requires ongoing operational attention. This guide covers the key operational concerns for running FERIN-compliant registers.
Health Monitoring
Track system health and performance
Backup & Recovery
Protect against data loss
Scaling
Handle growth in users and content
Disaster Recovery
Recover from major incidents
Health Metrics
Monitor these metrics to ensure register health:
System Metrics
| Metric | Description | Alert Threshold |
|---|---|---|
| API Availability | Percentage of successful requests | < 99.9% |
| Response Time (p50) | Median response latency | > 200ms |
| Response Time (p99) | 99th percentile latency | > 1000ms |
| Error Rate | 5xx responses as percentage | > 1% |
| Database Connections | Active connection count | > 80% of pool |
| Storage Usage | Database/storage utilization | > 80% |
Business Metrics
| Metric | Description | Monitoring |
|---|---|---|
| Item Count | Total items in register | Growth trends |
| Proposal Queue | Pending proposals awaiting review | Queue depth alerts |
| Proposal Age | Time from submission to decision | SLA tracking |
| User Activity | Active users per day/week | Trend analysis |
| API Usage | Requests by endpoint/client | Capacity planning |
Dashboard Example
99.97%Availability (30d)
47msAvg Response Time
1,247Active Items
3Pending Proposals
Monitoring Setup
Recommended Stack
Collection
- OpenTelemetry for traces/metrics
- Prometheus exporters
- Structured logging (JSON)
Storage
- Prometheus/VictoriaMetrics for metrics
- Elasticsearch/Loki for logs
- Jaeger/Tempo for traces
Visualization
- Grafana for dashboards
- Custom admin UI
- Status page for users
Alerting
- Alertmanager for routing
- PagerDuty/OpsGenie for on-call
- Slack/Email notifications
Key Alerts
CRITICALAPI down or error rate > 5%Immediate page
WARNINGResponse time p99 > 1sInvestigate within 1 hour
WARNINGStorage > 80%Plan expansion
INFOProposal queue > 10Notify Control Body
Backup and Recovery
Backup Strategy
Implement a tiered backup approach:
| Backup Type | Frequency | Retention | Recovery Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full database | Daily | 90 days | Hours |
| Incremental | Hourly | 7 days | Minutes |
| Transaction logs | Continuous | 24 hours | Seconds |
| Configuration | On change | Indefinite | Minutes |
Recovery Procedures
Point-in-Time Recovery
- Stop application services
- Restore last full backup
- Apply incremental backups
- Replay transaction logs to target time
- Verify data integrity
- Resume services
Item-Level Recovery
- Identify affected items from audit log
- Export current state for reference
- Restore item from backup
- Create corrective proposal if governed
- Document recovery in audit trail
Backup Testing: Regularly test backup restoration. A backup that can't be restored is not a backup. Schedule quarterly recovery drills.
Scaling Strategies
Read Scaling
Most register workloads are read-heavy. Scale reads with:
- Read replicas: Offload read queries to replica databases
- Caching: Cache frequently accessed items (Redis, CDN)
- CDN for static content: Serve published items via CDN
- API caching: Cache API responses with appropriate TTLs
Write Scaling
Write scaling is more complex:
- Connection pooling: Efficient database connection reuse
- Async processing: Queue proposals for background processing
- Sharding: Partition data across databases (for large registers)
Capacity Planning
Current State
- Items: 10,000
- Reads/day: 100,000
- Writes/day: 50
- Storage: 5 GB
Growth Rate
- Items: +10%/year
- Reads: +20%/year
- Writes: +5%/year
- Storage: +15%/year
1-Year Projection
- Items: 11,000
- Reads/day: 144,000
- Writes/day: 53
- Storage: 7.5 GB
Disaster Recovery
Recovery Objectives
| Scenario | RTO | RPO | Strategy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single server failure | 15 min | 0 | Auto-failover to standby |
| Database corruption | 2 hours | 1 hour | Point-in-time recovery |
| Data center outage | 4 hours | 1 hour | Failover to DR site |
| Ransomware attack | 24 hours | 24 hours | Isolated backup restore |
| Regional disaster | 48 hours | 24 hours | Cross-region recovery |
DR Architecture
┌─────────────────┐
│ Production │
│ (Primary) │
└────────┬────────┘
│
┌───────────────────┼───────────────────┐
│ │ │
▼ ▼ ▼
┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐
│ Sync │ │ Async │ │ Backup │
│Replica 1 │ │Replica 2 │ │ Storage │
└──────────┘ └────┬─────┘ └──────────┘
│
┌───────▼────────┐
│ DR Site │
│ (Standby) │
└────────────────┘DR Testing Schedule
- Monthly: Automated failover tests
- Quarterly: Full DR drill with team
- Annually: Cross-region recovery test
Performance Tuning
Database Optimization
Indexing Strategy
- Index frequently queried fields (identifier, status, dates)
- Use composite indexes for common filter combinations
- Monitor slow queries and add indexes as needed
- Remove unused indexes to reduce write overhead
Query Optimization
- Use pagination for large result sets
- Avoid SELECT * in production queries
- Use connection pooling
- Implement query timeouts
Application Optimization
Caching Layers
| Layer | What to Cache | TTL |
|---|---|---|
| CDN | Static assets, published items | 1 hour - 1 day |
| Application | Concept hierarchies, domains | 5-15 minutes |
| Database | Query results, item lookups | 1-5 minutes |
Maintenance Windows
Plan for regular maintenance:
| Maintenance Type | Frequency | Impact | Communication |
|---|---|---|---|
| Security patches | As needed | Usually none (rolling) | None unless required |
| Database upgrades | Quarterly | Brief read-only | 48-hour notice |
| Major version upgrade | Annually | Planned downtime | 2-week notice |
| Data migration | As needed | May require downtime | 1-week notice |
Operational Checklist
Daily
- ☐ Check monitoring dashboards
- ☐ Review error logs
- ☐ Verify backup completion
- ☐ Check proposal queue
Weekly
- ☐ Review capacity trends
- ☐ Check security alerts
- ☐ Audit user access
- ☐ Review SLA metrics
Monthly
- ☐ Test backup restoration
- ☐ Review and rotate credentials
- ☐ Update documentation
- ☐ Capacity planning review
Quarterly
- ☐ Full DR drill
- ☐ Security assessment
- ☐ Dependency updates
- ☐ Performance review