Storage Management Strategies for the CIO
Hot site
If a recovery time of a few hours (instead of minutes) is acceptable, a hot site is likely appropriate. The biggest difference between a hosted site and a hot site is the use of shared equipment for infrastructure components like servers and peripherals. Storage is dedicated and real-time data replication is used to get data from the production site to the DR site. Because equipment in the DR site is shared by multiple customers, hot sites are significantly less expensive than hosted sites. "Hot sites and warm sites can be implemented less expensively through outsourcing than doing them in-house because of shared equipment," says Ferguson. "DR services providers rely on the fact that not all customers have a disaster at the same time."
On the downside, the use of shared equipment makes hot sites less flexible because customers are limited by the equipment the DR service provider offers. While some service providers may have a limited selection of equipment, others are more flexible. "About 90% of the time we're able to use shared equipment, and the rest of the time we work with the customer to make it work," says Marc Langer, president at Recovery Point Systems, a provider of backup, storage and disaster recovery services. Larger service providers may be less flexible, so the nature of the shared equipment is likely to be a determining factor when selecting a hot or warm site provider.
Another consequence of using a site with shared
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equipment is the time limit on how long customers can use the shared gear in the event of a disaster. The limit varies among service providers, but typically ranges between 30 days and 90 days. "Customers can use the shared equipment for 60 days before they need to get out or before they get migrated to a cold site," says Langer. Service providers with a larger number of data centers, like IBM Corp., can be more flexible. "We're pretty open-ended because we can shift workloads to other data centers," says John Sing, senior consultant, business continuity strategy and planning at IBM's Systems and Technology Group. To avoid unpleasant surprises, a clear understanding of the terms, conditions and limitations of managed DR services is required prior to committing to an agreement that may span several years.
Warm site
In contrast to a hot site, a warm site relies on backups for recovery. As a result, it doesn't require dedicated storage but instead can take advantage of less-expensive shared storage. In other words, all components of a warm site, including storage, are shared among multiple customers. Therefore, most of the considerations of hot sites also apply for warm sites.
In the past, there was a huge difference between hot sites and warm sites because backups were limited to tapes. As a result, warm site recoveries were typically measured in days. Warm sites that rely on tape-based backups for recovery are clearly at the lower end of the DR services spectrum.
Disk-based backups have narrowed the gap between warm sites and hot sites, and almost all DR service providers now offer an electronic vaulting option, which is essentially disk-based backup of production data over the network. RTOs and RPOs of warm sites with electronic vaulting are typically less than a day, which is very close to the recovery times offered by hot sites but at a fraction of the cost. "There has been about a 10x price difference between a replicated DR infrastructure and a shared infrastructure with electronic vaulting," explains HP's Ferguson. "Electronic vaulting is closing the gap between tape-based recovery and a replicated DR infrastructure, and customers need to look at it because of its price and reliability benefits."
This was first published in January 2009
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