Cold Servers OK with Software Assurance

Organizations that have Software Assurance (SA) upgrade rights on server applications can now maintain a “cold” server—a fully configured backup server—without requiring an additional license for the server software. Positioned as a disaster recovery benefit, the right to keep a cold server handy will be useful for organizations that want to minimize downtime by simply turning on a replacement server while they diagnose a problem with a production server. It will also be useful in smaller organizations that could not otherwise afford a backup server. However, organizations that do not currently have SA should consider alternatives before taking advantage of the cold server benefit.

The cold server benefit is governed by several important rules:

Powered down. A cold server must normally be powered down, preventing its use as a hot spare or failover device. The server can be turned on periodically for software installation, patching, and testing.

No simultaneous operation. The cold server and the production server it is intended to replace in the event of a disaster cannot be running at the same time, except when the production server is being recovered.