N10-009 Question 220
Single answerDR sites: Cold site, Warm site, Hot siteA regional insurance company is updating its disaster recovery plan after a flood previously took its primary data center offline for four days. Leadership has defined these recovery requirements for the secondary site: critical claims-processing servers must be available within a few hours of a disaster, replicated data should already be on-site, and the company wants to avoid the cost of maintaining a fully mirrored production environment. Which type of DR site best meets these requirements?
- A
Cold site
- B
Warm site
- C
Hot site
- D
Mobile recovery site
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: B
Explanation
The best answer is warm site because the scenario requires a moderate recovery time objective: services must be restored within a few hours, data should already be available at the alternate location, and the organization does not want the high ongoing cost of a fully mirrored environment. In disaster recovery planning, a cold site offers the lowest cost but the longest recovery time because equipment and data restoration still need to be arranged. A hot site offers the fastest recovery because it is essentially a ready-to-run duplicate environment, but it is significantly more expensive. A warm site sits between these two models and is commonly selected when an organization needs a practical balance of recovery capability and cost. This aligns with standard business continuity and disaster recovery guidance used across IT operations, where DR site selection is driven by recovery time objective (RTO), recovery point objective (RPO), and budget.
- A. Incorrect.
Incorrect. A cold site typically provides basic facilities such as space, power, and network connectivity, but it does not usually have preinstalled, ready-to-run servers or current replicated data in place. Recovery at a cold site often takes days because hardware must be installed or restored and data must be loaded before services can resume. Someone might choose this because it is less expensive, but it does not meet the requirement to restore critical services within a few hours.
- B. Correct.
Correct. A warm site is designed to balance cost and recovery speed. It usually has network infrastructure, power, and at least some preconfigured systems or equipment available, and it may receive periodic or ongoing data replication depending on the organization's design. A warm site can generally be brought online within hours, which fits the scenario's need for faster recovery than a cold site without the expense of a fully mirrored hot site.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. A hot site is a fully operational alternate site with systems and current data ready to take over almost immediately, often supporting very low RTO and RPO targets. While a hot site would satisfy the technical recovery requirement, it exceeds the stated cost constraint because the company specifically wants to avoid maintaining a fully mirrored production environment. This option reflects the common misconception that the fastest recovery option is automatically the best choice, even when business requirements include budget limitations.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. A mobile recovery site is a portable recovery facility, often delivered as a trailer or temporary unit, and is not the standard answer to this requirement set. While it can help restore some operations, it is not defined by recovery readiness in the same way as cold, warm, or hot sites. It also does not inherently guarantee prepositioned replicated data or recovery within a few hours for critical server workloads.