A system for rapid recovery of session failures in a communication network, the system comprising: an overwatch system implemented in an overwatch plane of a communication network and comprising: a session analyzer to: detect establishment of a communication session to effect end-to-end connectivity for one or more user devices on the communication network via participating network functions, NFs, of the communication network; and analyze the communication session to determine a critical session context dataset, CSCD, template that defines, for each NF of the participating NFs, a respective CSCD that define the minimum set of information by which the NF uniquely defines the communication session; an end-to-end session monitor coupled with the session analyzer to capture end-to-end context data for the communication session, while the communication session is active, by continuously recording, from each NF of the participating NFs, the respective CSCD for the NF and respective endpoint information for the NF that indicates with which others of the participating NFs the NF is communicating to effect the communication session; and a session recovery engine to: detect a session failure causing at least a failed NF of the participating NFs to be reassigned to a replacement NF that is not previously one of the participating NFs; and recover the communication session, responsive to the detecting the session failure, by providing at least the replacement NF with recovery data generated from the end-to-end context data. a session analyzer to: detect establishment of a communication session to effect end-to-end connectivity for one or more user devices on the communication network via participating network functions, NFs, of the communication network; and analyze the communication session to determine a critical session context dataset, CSCD, template that defines, for each NF of the participating NFs, a respective CSCD that define the minimum set of information by which the NF uniquely defines the communication session; detect establishment of a communication session to effect end-to-end connectivity for one or more user devices on the communication network via participating network functions, NFs, of the communication network; and analyze the communication session to determine a critical session context dataset, CSCD, template that defines, for each NF of the participating NFs, a respective CSCD that define the minimum set of information by which the NF uniquely defines the communication session; an end-to-end session monitor coupled with the session analyzer to capture end-to-end context data for the communication session, while the communication session is active, by continuously recording, from each NF of the participating NFs, the respective CSCD for the NF and respective endpoint information for the NF that indicates with which others of the participating NFs the NF is communicating to effect the communication session; and a session recovery engine to: detect a session failure causing at least a failed NF of the participating NFs to be reassigned to a replacement NF that is not previously one of the participating NFs; and recover the communication session, responsive to the detecting the session failure, by providing at least the replacement NF with recovery data generated from the end-to-end context data. detect a session failure causing at least a failed NF of the participating NFs to be reassigned to a replacement NF that is not previously one of the participating NFs; and recover the communication session, responsive to the detecting the session failure, by providing at least the replacement NF with recovery data generated from the end-to-end context data.