Week 8 Posting - Hot vs. Warm vs. Cold storage

Anytime data is being used for a company purpose it is a great idea to back up all data to prevent data loss from natural disasters or external threats. Having backups on-site that are done on a schedule is a great start, however, this does not protect the data if the physical building has an issue. To remediate this issue the practice of off-site backup was invented, there are three types of topologies that can be used for off-site backups. First is a hot site, which will constantly back up all the data to another location with an identical storage system at another location, the biggest downside is the cost of power, hardware equipment, networking resources, and building rack space. Although there are places that can rent out shelf space this is still going to be a costly expense. This is the best choice for companies that can absorb the cost without an issue due to all data still working when the main system fails.

The second option is a warm site, unlike a hot site this system will only backup in increments and will not always be powered on, this system will require a few hours to a few days to get the system online. Often times this will include the same server hardware with a periodical backup. This is a middle ground and is more cost-effective than the hot site.

Lastly is the cold site, which relies entirely on storage media typically done through Tape Archival data, each backup period a physical tape drive will need to be installed into the primary system to allow the system to clone to the disk. The benefit is that this only requires a tape reader/writer and does not require a second location at all aside from the tape storage location. This is also extremely cheap as a multi-TB disk can be bought for less than $20. The downside of this is that to get the data back all tape drives from the last full backup will need to be restored in the proper order, this can take a long time.