Cold DR (Disaster Recovery) refers to a type of disaster recovery site or strategy that provides only the most basic infrastructure, with minimal or no pre-installed hardware, software, or data. A Cold DR Site typically includes only essential utilities such as power, cooling, and network connectivity. There is little to no IT hardware or software pre-installed. Organizations must bring in their own hardware, install operating systems and applications, and restore data from backups after a disaster occurs.
Because everything must be set up from scratch, it can take days to become fully operational. This makes cold sites unsuitable for mission-critical workloads where downtime must be minimized. Cold sites are the most affordable disaster recovery option, as they do not require ongoing investment in duplicate hardware, software, or real-time data replication.