move the servers? On what planet is server infrastructure movable on a whim?
EDIT: Just because it's feasible doesn't mean we will actually do it; just wanted to clarify that we weren't firing from the hip.
Having power and/or rack space is not the same as having servers, switches, etc. anyway.
Hopefully it will not be down that long. We'll let you know more when we know more.
I'm not trying to 2nd guess your ops team, but the whole point in having off-site backups is to facilitate a your RTO plan in case you lose your primary DC with no warning. I guess I'd be surprised if you don't have a < 24 hour RTO plan in place. With how quickly you can get VMs and even dedicated server provisioned by many hosting providers (minutes to a couple hours), the idea of physically moving servers off-site into a new racks, with new networking, etc... seems kinda nutty...
FogBugz is more of a problem. Some days the "Resolve" button is my only source of job satisfaction.
Moving the hard drives could be an option, and I believe it is sometimes done, but it assumes there are empty boxes on the other end waiting to receive the hard drives in a similar configuration to how the hard drives came. Also there's separate issues depending how many drives they are dealing with, and what redundancy is involved. If it's very few, then you might as well move the server outright. If it's very many, then there's extra human overhead (and room for error) in keeping the drives together.
On the other hand, with a 1000/Mbit uplink that they were allowed to saturate, they'd still only be able to copy out 1 terabyte in 3 hours.
Essential quote (literally from Networking 101): "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."
100 TB of high speed RAID-10 would fit in maybe 30 shoe boxes.
Then, after things are moved, you have to deal with drives that have jiggled loose, components that outright fail to work again, or things that get accidentally broken in transit.
Let's just declare an emergency federal holiday until Nov 2 so everybody can recover without dangerous heroic measures.
We seem to be arguing separate points -- I'm saying that it's not unreasonable that a small company could be moved fairly easily. Possibly as easily as unplugging a blade enclosure and throwing it in a station wagon. There are loads of small businesses that can run on an amount of hardware that can be easily transported. (When I used to gig on electric bass, my amp and other rack gear was in a portable 8U rack and that was more "portable" than the 100 pound speaker cabinet.)
I can't tell if your point is that it's unreasonable for all companies, which is wrong, or that it's unreasonable for some companies, which is obvious.