Incident Action Plan Map Sample

Standard Operating Procedure: Incident Action Plan Map (IAP-MAP) Generation & Execution

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1. Executive Summary & Purpose

This Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) defines the institutional engineering standard for generating, executing, and validating an Incident Action Plan Map (IAP-MAP) within the Template Registry ecosystem.

An IAP-MAP is a synchronized, spatial-topological representation of operational dependencies, failure domains, and recovery pathways deployed during critical Tier-1 and Tier-2 infrastructure incidents. The purpose of this SOP is to eliminate ambiguity, enforce deterministic recovery paths, and reduce Mean Time to Resolution (MTTR) by establishing a uniform visualization and execution standard for cross-functional Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Security, and Core Infrastructure teams.

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2. Scope & Prerequisites

2.1 Scope

This procedure applies to all production environments, staging clusters, and infrastructure-as-code (IaC) repositories managed by Template Registry. It is mandatory for all active Major Incident Response Teams (MIRT).

2.2 Prerequisites & Tooling

• Access Control: Read/Write access to the Enterprise Datadog, Grafana Enterprise, and AWS/GCP Multi-Region Control Planes.
• Software Stack:
  • kubectl (v1.28+) configured for active cluster contexts.
  • Terraform CLI (v1.5+) for state inspection.
  • Template Registry CLI (tr-ctl v4.2+).
• Workspace: Dual-monitor setup with access to the secure incident bridge (PagerDuty/Zoom integration) and the live IAP-MAP canvas instance (map.internal.templateregistry.io).

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3. Roles & Responsibilities (RACI Matrix)

Legend: Responsible (does the work), Accountable (has final approval), Consulted (provides input), Informed (kept updated).

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4. Step-by-Step Procedure

Phase 1: Triage and IAP-MAP Initialization

• 1.1 Verify incident severity level via PagerDuty; confirm Tier-1 or Tier-2 status requiring IAP-MAP generation.
• 1.2 Authenticate to the IAP-MAP generation dashboard using hardware MFA:

  tr-ctl auth login --scope=incident-response --mfa-required
  

• 1.3 Initialize a blank workspace instance mapped to the affected cluster ID:

  tr-ctl iap-map init --cluster=<cluster-id> --incident-ref=<INC-UUID> --template=standard-tier1
  

• 1.4 Assign the Lead Systems Architect (LSA) as the active map custodian in the collaboration panel.

Phase 2: Topological Overlay & Failure Domain Mapping

• 2.1 Pull real-time service mesh telemetry to populate node dependencies onto the canvas:

  tr-ctl iap-map sync --source=istio-telemetry --depth=3
  

• 2.2 Highlight degraded ingress/egress boundaries using the native red-line containment filter (Shift + C).
• 2.3 Verify database replication lag nodes and message queue backpressure hotspots are visibly flagged with yellow-to-orange heat gradients.
• 2.4 Publish the baseline dependency map to the Incident Commander for immediate operational sign-off.

Phase 3: Actionable Mitigation Path Execution

• 3.1 Identify the critical path node causing cascading failures using the automated path-finder utility (Ctrl + Space -> "Trace Failure").
• 3.2 Select the pre-vated mitigation runbook linked directly to the highlighted node on the IAP-MAP.
• 3.3 Execute the circuit breaker pattern or traffic shedding action via the secured command execution panel:

  tr-ctl iap-map execute-node --node-id=<NODE-UUID> --action=isolate-traffic
  

• 3.4 Monitor telemetry feedback loops directly within the IAP-MAP node overlay to confirm recovery metrics turn green.

Phase 4: Verification and Incident Closure

• 4.1 Run automated end-to-end smoke tests against the isolated zone to verify system integrity:

  tr-ctl validate-zone --cluster=<cluster-id> --mode=post-mitigation
  

• 4.2 Freeze the IAP-MAP canvas state to preserve temporal telemetry data for forensic analysis:

  tr-ctl iap-map snapshot --incident-ref=<INC-UUID> --output=json
  

• 4.3 Hand off the finalized IAP-MAP snapshot to the Post-Mortem Working Group.

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5. Quality Assurance & Pro-Tips

5.1 Best Practices

• Keep Maps Atomic: Avoid overloading a single IAP-MAP canvas with cross-region dependencies unless performing a global DR drill. Restrict views to the affected availability zone.
• Deterministic Naming: Always use strict UUID referencing for temporary nodes created during isolation procedures to prevent orphan states in Terraform.

5.2 Common Pitfalls

• Pitfall: Failing to sync Istio telemetry before executing isolation scripts, resulting in severed auxiliary routes.
  • Correction: Always execute step 2.1 completely before attempting Phase 3 actions.
• Pitfall: Manual map modifications without utilizing tr-ctl, causing state drift between the live canvas and the cluster control plane.

5.3 Metric Thresholds

• Initialization SLA: An IAP-MAP must be fully initialized and populated with telemetry within < 4 minutes of Tier-1 incident declaration.
• Path Resolution Accuracy: Automated topological mapping must achieve a minimum of 99.5% dependency accuracy against actual Kubernetes API server states.

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6. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q1: What happens if the IAP-MAP generation tool loses connection to the live cluster control plane during an active incident?

A: Fallback to offline mode immediately by executing tr-ctl iap-map offline-load --snapshot-cache-dir=/var/cache/tr/. This loads the last known healthy topological cache captured within the past 15 minutes, allowing mitigation steps to proceed without real-time telemetry streaming.

Q2: Can junior on-call engineers execute isolation nodes on the IAP-MAP without LSA approval?

A: During Tier-1 incidents, if the Incident Commander is unreachable, the SRE On-Call is granted temporary break-glass authority to execute pre-approved mitigation paths. However, every execution logged via tr-ctl iap-map execute-node triggers an immutable audit event sent directly to the Director of Systems Engineering.

Q3: How are custom microservice topologies added to the IAP-MAP generation templates?

A: All services must include standardized OpenTelemetry annotations in their Kubernetes deployment manifests. The CI/CD pipeline automatically registers these annotations into the Template Registry graph database upon successful staging deployment.