Hot / Warm / Cold Site OptionsReplication TargetsBCDR Planning
Disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BCDR) require secondary-site hardware sized to recover production workloads at acceptable RPO/RTO. Pro Disk Network supplies the secondary-site hardware in hot, warm, or cold standby configurations, including replication targets and the network infrastructure linking primary and DR sites.
DR Site Tier Options
Hot site: continuously synced, RPO 0 (synchronous replication) / RTO minutes. Identical hardware to production. Highest cost, lowest downtime. Required for SLA-bound critical workloads. Warm site: continuously synced with manual failover. RPO 5-60 min / RTO 1-6 hours. Same hardware tier as production but smaller capacity. Cost-effective for tier-2 workloads. Cold site: hardware on standby, no live replication. RPO depends on backup frequency / RTO measured in days. Cheapest, for non-critical workloads + DR exercise compliance.
Typical DR Site Bundle (Warm Site for 50-100 VM Cluster)
Mirror of production cluster at 60-70% capacity: 2× Dell R740 (vs 3× in production), matched-spec RAM/NVMe. 1× Dell R740xd2 as Veeam target. 1× Cisco Catalyst 9300 + 2× SFP+ uplink to dark fiber or VPN tunnel back to production. 1× APC SMT2200 UPS. Total: $18-25K refurbished for the DR-site hardware.
BCDR Planning Support
Email us your: (1) production hardware inventory, (2) target RPO/RTO per workload tier, (3) DR site preferences (your own facility / colocation / cloud), (4) replication tech preference (Veeam / Zerto / SRM / other). We return a hot/warm/cold site spec with quote.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much smaller can DR be than production?
For hot site: identical capacity (any smaller risks SLA miss). For warm site: 60-70% of production typical (focuses on tier-1 workloads). For cold site: 30-50% (capable of running critical apps only during recovery).
Can DR site be in the cloud?
Yes — AWS Disaster Recovery Service, Azure Site Recovery, and Google Cloud Disaster Recovery all support on-prem-to-cloud replication. Most enterprises do hybrid: on-prem production + cloud DR for cost optimization.
How often should I test DR?
Industry best practice: quarterly DR tests for tier-1 workloads, annual for tier-2. Many shops skip testing for years and discover issues during actual disasters. Pro Disk Network can supply test-environment hardware for quarterly DR exercises.
