Hot, warm and cold sites

Alternate processing sites, from ready-to-run to an empty room.

A hot site is fully equipped and can take over within hours. A warm site has some equipment and needs configuration and data before use. A cold site has power and space only, and takes weeks to bring up. Cost falls as recovery time rises.

On the exam

Match the site to the RTO: hours means hot, days means warm, weeks means cold. Reciprocal agreements are cheap but hard to rely on.

Related terms

Recovery time objective (RTO)How quickly a system must be running again after a disruption.
Business impact analysis (BIA)Working out which processes matter most and how fast they must recover.

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