ColdStandby

ColdStandby is a disaster recovery strategy in information technology in which a secondary data-processing environment is prepared but kept powered down and not actively servicing workloads. It typically comprises standby hardware, storage, and network connectivity that mirrors the primary site but remains offline until needed. The term contrasts with hot standby, where the backup environment runs continuously, and warm standby, which remains partially ready for faster failover.

Activation involves coordinated steps: detecting failure, bringing the standby site online, provisioning compute resources, restoring or synchronizing data from backups or replication, and directing traffic to the standby environment. Because the infrastructure is not running, ColdStandby can offer substantial cost savings but generally entails longer recovery times and potential data loss between the last synchronized state and failover.

Common use cases include small to mid-sized organizations, regulated industries with budget constraints, or environments where long outages are acceptable. Best practices include maintaining up-to-date recovery playbooks, regularly testing the failover process, validating data integrity, and aligning the standby configuration with evolving primary workloads. Some organizations pair ColdStandby with cloud-based replication to reduce capital expenditure while preserving a defined recovery objective.

See also: disaster recovery, business continuity planning, hot standby, warm standby.