A regional US electric utility faced one of the most stringent compliance requirements in critical infrastructure: a hard one-hour Recovery Time Objective (RTO) across 250 virtual machines and 370 terabytes of data. Traditional backup-centric recovery approaches couldn’t meet this mandate—especially when factoring in the risk that attackers could compromise the management plane. Extended downtime threatened grid stability, regulatory penalties, and public safety.

Key challenges:

• Strict mandate: One-hour full recovery requirement

• Scale: 370 TB and 250 VMs must be recovered in under 60 minutes

• Single points of failure: Dependence on compromised management systems

• Backup limitations: Conventional recovery too slow at this scale

• Compliance risk: Need for repeatable, provable recovery evidence

The utility deployed VM2020 CyberVR with Hitachi VSP 5200 arrays and Ops Center Protector immutable snapshots, building an Isolated Recovery Environment (IRE) that operated from an independent management plane, always in sync with production. CyberVR automated Thin Digital Twin startup, service orchestration, and recovery validation—delivering sub-10-second VM restores and full service recovery within the mandated one-hour window.

Solution highlights:

• Isolated and always-ready management plane eliminates single point of failure
  
  
• Immutable snapshots guarantee clean recovery points
  
  
• Automated service orchestration reduces human error
  
  
• Isolated recovery environment prevents re-infection during recovery
  
  
• High-performance storage accelerates data access

VM2020 worked with the utility’s IT, compliance, and operations teams to design and validate the recovery blueprint:

1. Infrastructure Assessment – Mapped all critical dependencies.
   
   
2. Snapshot Strategy – Configured immutable, frequent snapshots.
   
   
3. IRE Configuration – Established dedicated compute and network isolation.
   
   
4. Automation Deployment – Built orchestrated recovery workflows for all VMs.
   
   
5. Validation Testing – Executed full-scale recovery rehearsals, proving compliance.
   
   

This approach blended technology deployment with process alignment and compliance assurance—ensuring the solution addressed both operational and regulatory imperatives.