Pilot Light vs Warm Standby
These are two disaster recovery strategies in cloud computing:
Pilot Light
- Minimal version of the environment is always running
- Only core components are kept active (like a pilot light in a gas heater)
- Faster recovery than cold start, but slower than warm standby
- Lower cost than warm standby
- Example: Database replicas running, but application servers turned off
Warm Standby
- Scaled-down but fully functional copy of the production environment
- All components are running, just at reduced capacity
- Faster recovery time than pilot light
- Higher cost than pilot light
- Example: Application and database running with smaller instances
Key Differences
| Feature | Pilot Light | Warm Standby |
|---|---|---|
| Running components | Core only | All components |
| Recovery time | Minutes to hours | Minutes |
| Cost | Lower | Higher |
| Complexity | Medium | Medium-High |