Staffing in Hot and Cold Recovery

With most big enterprises and a majority of small and medium businesses running on data centers, it is vital to ensure the safety of data centers in the event of a disaster. Disaster recovery normally throws up two scenarios: 1. Recovery in a hot site or 2. recovery in a cold site.

A hot site is where all supporting hardware infrastructure, as well as your data, would be available in the event of a disaster. Also, it is quite easy to perform the recovery process, provided you are able to meet the exorbitant costs of such a mechanism. A cold site, on the other hand, does not have any infrastructure or your data, and you would be required to load all the necessary software tools and data into them. This approach takes time and is economical as well.

Now, both these scenarios pose different type of requirements for personnel employed for the purpose.

A hot site typically has everything set up and all that is required is to perform the recovery procedure. Hence, only a fewer number of people with high technological expertise in handling data recovery are required for doing the job. There is no need for any support staff, as the operation is quite simple and requires little effort.

On the contrary, a cold site requires technical experts to perform the recovery, supporting staff to set up the physical infrastructure, and technical support staff to set up the software interfaces, and would require more supervisory staff to ensure everything is done properly.

Which do you think would be more beneficial for your business?

Alex Carroll

Managing Member at Lifeline Data Centers

Alex, co-owner, is responsible for all real estate, construction and mission critical facilities: hardened buildings, power systems, cooling systems, fire suppression, and environmentals. Alex also manages relationships with the telecommunications providers and has an extensive background in IT infrastructure support, database administration and software design and development. Alex architected Lifeline’s proprietary GRCA system and is hands-on every day in the data center.