DISASTER RECOVERY (DR) is a vital component of any organization’s business continuity plan. In the event of a disaster or unexpected downtime, having a robust DR strategy in place can make the difference between minimal disruption and catastrophic losses. Two key metrics in disaster recovery planning are RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and RTO (Recovery Time Objective). These terms are often used interchangeably, but they represent distinct aspects of your DR plan. What exactly is RPO and RTO? Let’s dive into these terms and what they mean to your disaster recovery plan.
RPO (Recovery Point Objective): The Data You Can Afford to Lose
RPO is a measure of the maximum amount of data loss that an organization can tolerate during a disaster. It essentially answers the question, “How much data can we afford to lose?” RPO is measured in time and is usually expressed in hours or minutes. To determine the RPO for your organization, you need to assess the criticality of your data and its value to your operations.
Critical Data: Consider data like financial records, customer information, and transaction logs. This data is mission-critical, and an organization may have a low RPO for it, often aiming for near-zero data loss.
Less Critical Data: Non-critical data, such as historical archives or outdated reports, may have a higher RPO. In the event of a disaster, losing a few hours or even a day’s worth of this data might be acceptable.
The key to setting an appropriate RPO is balancing the cost of data recovery against the potential losses resulting from data unavailability. Achieving a very low RPO can be costly, as it often involves real-time data replication and redundancy.
How to calculate RPO
To determine how much data can be lost without significant damage, follow these guidelines and choose time ranges for all your important systems.
- Run tests to determine how quickly data needs to be available for each enterprise application. These include cloud storage platforms, CRM solutions, and e-commerce applications.
- Categorize all your main enterprise applications depending on their backup restoration requirements. For example, does the data need to be restored within a few minutes, or can it wait a day?
- Calculate your company’s financial position regarding backups. For example, for how many applications can the organization afford to maintain fail-over and replication services? Does your business need to store some backups offline, on hard drives, or tape?
- Choose a couple of top-priority applications that require immediate restoration. If the servers that support your main cloud platform have continuous replication, they’ll be restored rapidly. But a database of previous sales contacts may be backed up with hard drives, and they’ll take hours to restore. Most businesses can’t afford rapid backups for all of their software.
RTO (Recovery Time Objective): How Quickly Can You Get Back to Normal?
On the other hand, RTO is all about downtime. It defines the maximum allowable time it takes to recover and restore systems to their normal operations after a disaster. In essence, RTO answers the question, “How quickly can we get back to business?” RTO is also measured in time, typically in hours or minutes.
Highly Critical Systems: For systems that are crucial to your operations, like e-commerce platforms or critical business applications, you may have a very low RTO. These systems need to be up and running almost immediately.
Less Critical Systems: Systems that are less critical, such as development or testing environments, might have a more relaxed RTO, allowing for a slower recovery process.
The goal is to strike a balance between a quick recovery and the cost associated with achieving it. Meeting a low RTO may require investments in high availability, failover solutions, and robust disaster recovery procedures.
How to calculate RTO
To calculate your enterprise’s RTO, follow these guidelines:
- Determine your most critical applications and systems. To decide which these are, ask the following questions:
- Which user-facing applications need to be constantly available for our customers?
- Which applications are most critical for our revenue operations to function? (Examples include CRM systems and self-service client platforms.)
- Which application is the front line of security in the business?
- Which data stores supply the company’s most critical applications? (An example is the all-flash arrays that hold customer data for a CRM, like Salesforce.)
- When a critical application goes down, how much time passes before it negatively impacts a client’s experience?
- When a critical application goes down, how long does it take to be restored?
- If a critical storage system goes down or loses data, how long does it take to restore that data from backups?
Note that RTOs will likely differ for different applications. Also, keep in mind that even non-customer-facing critical applications may still need rapid restoration, if they provide crucial IT or security services to the business.
Why Both RPO and RTO Matter
Understanding the differences between RPO and RTO is vital because they serve different purposes in your disaster recovery plan. RPO focuses on the amount of data loss, while RTO concentrates on the downtime you can tolerate. Both metrics inform your overall DR strategy:
Determining Priorities: RPO helps you identify which data is most critical and should be replicated more frequently, while RTO helps you prioritize the systems and services that need to be restored first.
Resource Allocation: You allocate resources differently based on your RPO and RTO requirements. Highly critical systems may demand more investment in redundancy and rapid recovery technologies.
Cost-Benefit Analysis: Balancing the ideal RPO and RTO with available resources and budget constraints is essential. It involves making informed decisions about the trade-offs between data loss and downtime.
RPO and RTO are important concepts to keep in mind when developing your disaster recovery plan. By setting appropriate RPO and RTO values for different data and systems in your organization, you can ensure that your organization is well-prepared to respond to disasters while managing costs effectively. Remember, no single RPO or RTO fits all scenarios, so customizing them to your specific needs is crucial for a successful disaster recovery plan. Reach out to Absolute Performance today to see how we can assist with your Disaster Recovery Planning.
