What is the condition for the VEN to come out of its degraded state?

The condition for a Virtual Enforcement Node (VEN) to transition out of its degraded state is achieving three consecutive successful heartbeats. In the context of Illumio's operations, a heartbeat is a signal sent from the VEN to indicate that it is functioning properly and connected to the Illumio policy management infrastructure. When the VEN experiences issues like network problems or other failures, it enters a degraded state to indicate its inability to process policy enforcement effectively.

By requiring three consecutive successful heartbeats, the system ensures that the VEN has adequately stabilized and is back to normal operation before transitioning out of the degraded state. This criterion helps to prevent premature recovery, which could occur if fewer heartbeats were required, thus enhancing the reliability of the system.

In scenarios with different numbers of required heartbeats, such as five, seven, or twelve, it could either delay recovery unnecessarily or complicate the recovery monitoring process without providing significant benefits. The choice of three balances the need for a reliable indication of readiness while allowing for a timely return to normal operation.