Systems and methods are described for a non-disruptive planned failover from a primary copy of data at a primary storage system to a mirror copy of the data at a cross-site secondary storage system. According to an example, a planned failover feature of a multi-site distributed storage system provides an order of operations such that a primary copy of a first data center continues to serve I/O operations until a mirror copy of a second data center is ready. This planned failover feature improves functionality and efficiency of the distributed storage system by providing non-disruptiveness during planned failover—even if various failures occur. The planned failover feature also includes a persistent fence to avoid serving I/O operations during a timing window when both primary data storage and secondary data storage are attempting to have a master role to serve I/O operations and this avoids a split-brain situation.