Disaster Recovery concepts: Recovery Point Objective(RPO) & Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) are two of the most important factors of a disaster recovery plan. These are objectives which can guide enterprises to choose an ideal data backup plan.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

A recovery point objective (RPO) is defined by business continuity planning. It is the maximum targeted period in which data might be lost from an IT service due to a major incident. Think of your Recovery Point Objective as the point in time one would like to go back to and retrieve data.

For example, if one had a disaster three days ago, a safe Recovery Point Objective would be four days ago.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the duration of time and a service level within which a business process must be restored after a disaster in order to avoid unacceptable consequences associated with a break in continuity.

In other words, the RTO is the answer to the question: “How much time did it take to recover after notification of business process disruption?“

A Recovery Time Objective is the minimum amount of time it will take to get the business back up and running following a disaster. Typically, this is defined by how much downtime one can afford before the business suffers.

To conclude, the image below summarizes the 2 concepts pictorially…