Yes, we have multiple off-site backups (cloud as well as an offsite storage DC) for all customer data. All data is still safe in NYC -- we've just brought down service to prevent problems in case of an abrupt power failure.
Sure, but that invalidates the complaint of it being infeasible to scp out 4 TB of data before your NYC DC runs out of power. Those 4 TB of data are already out of NYC, safely in some other DC where you have hardware. You just need new servers/VMs in/near that DC to restore the backups to.
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...
