Model 2: Pilot Light
Pilot Light is a cost-optimized disaster recovery strategy where only the most critical components remain active in the disaster recovery site.
Instead of running the complete application stack, organizations keep databases, replication services, and core infrastructure continuously synchronized.
During a disaster, application servers and supporting services are started using automation and infrastructure templates.
Primary Data Center
Running Services
Web
API
Database
Storage
Pilot Light Site
Always Running
Database
Replication
Core Storage
Advantages
- Lower infrastructure cost because heavy application servers remain completely turned off.
- Much faster recovery time than traditional Backup & Restore methods.
- Critical business data and database entries remain continuously synchronized.
- Provides an excellent engineering balance between cloud budget and recovery speed.
Limitations
- Recovery is not instant because virtual machines must be turned on and provisioned.
- Application servers must still be automated and booted up during a failover event.
- Requires extensive orchestration blueprints and runbook automation testing.
Typical Recovery Targets
- RPO (Recovery Point Objective): Minutes
- RTO (Recovery Time Objective): 30 Minutes to 2 Hours
- Cost Metric: Medium-Low
Recommended For
- Standard enterprise software frameworks
- Government administrative cloud workloads
- Internal core business operation platforms
- Organizations seeking a massive reduction in disaster recovery compute expenses