In today's business world companies are beginning to understand the importance and their absolute reliance on information technology in executing their business decisions. According to the Business Recovery Managers Association, over thirty-seven per cent (37%) of businesses that lose a major portion of their IT systems and data fail within one year of the disaster. The negative impact of businesses not having access to their systems even a few days can reciprocate unforeseen consequences on their customers, suppliers and business partners. Legislation actions such as Sarbanes-Oxley and other regulatory compliance measures recognize the importance of IT infrastructure and are now requiring companies to have alternate IT systems and data readily available should their main production systems fail.

Hot Site
Businesses in need of uninterrupted access to their systems and company data build and maintain a hot-site. A hot-site is a mirrored system. This type of structure replicates the data on your current main system to the hot-site system continuously so your data is always current on both systems. The hot-site is always ready to take over immediately in the event of any disaster or main system failure. The network can be set-up to switchover automatically to the disaster recovery site. The hot sites can be managed remotely by company personnel. Tonaquint Data Center staff can perform any of the work that needs to be done on-site.

Warm Site
Businesses that can handle not having access to their IT systems and data for one or two days can build a warm site. The hardware and software is set-up and the power is on. At a warm site the backup data is updated on a daily or weekly basis or is brought in from a storage site and loaded onto the system after a failure. Once the up-to-date data is loaded, the system administrators can set-up the databases; test and load balance the systems. Depending on how the data is backed-up, the warm site might be able to be managed remotely by company personnel.

Cold Site
Businesses that can tolerate being without access to their IT systems and data for three to five days often choose to establish a cold site. The IT equipment is in the colocation space, but the systems are not powered up. The software and backup data can be brought to the colocation site and loaded onto the powered-up systems. Systems administrators then test and load balance the systems before going operational. This is a very cost-effective means for many companies.