Solution brief
Understanding RPO and RTO
Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time RPO designates the variable amount of data that will be lost
Objective (RTO) are two of the most important parameters or will have to be re-entered during network downtime.
of a disaster recovery or data protection plan. These are RTO designates the amount of “real time” that can pass
objectives which can guide enterprises to choose an optimal before the disruption begins to seriously and unacceptably
data backup plan. impede the flow of normal business operations.
The RPO/RTO, along with a business impact analysis, There is always a gap between the actuals – Recovery
provides the basis for identifying and analyzing viable Time Actual (RTA) and Recovery Point Actual (RPA) – and
strategies for inclusion in the business continuity plan. objectives introduced by various manual and automated
Viable strategy options include any which would enable steps to bring the business application up. These actuals can
resumption of a business process in a time frame at or only be exposed by disaster and business
near the RPO/RTO. disruption rehearsals.
At first glance these two terms appear to be quite similar.
Some examples
The best way to understand the difference between them is
Traditional Backups: In traditional tape backups, if your
to associate the “RP” in “RPO” by imagining that they stand
backup plan takes 2 hours for a scheduled backup at
for “Rewrite Parameters” and the “RT” in “RTO”
0600 hours and 1800 hours, then a primary site failure at
as “Real Time.”
1400 hours would leave you with an option to restore from
RPO: Recovery Point Objective 0600 hours backup, which means RPA of 8 hours and
2 hours RTA.
Recovery Point Objective (RPO) describes the interval
of time that might pass during a disruption before the Continuous Replication: Replication provides higher RPO
quantity of data lost during that period exceeds the guarantees as the target system contains the mirrored
Business Continuity Plan’s maximum allowable threshold image of the source. The RPA values depend upon how
or “tolerance.” fast the changes are applied and if the replication is
synchronous or asynchronous. RPO is dependent on
Example: If the last available good copy of data upon an
how soon can the data on target/replicated site be
outage is from 18 hours ago, and the RPO for this business is
made available to the application.
20 hours then we are still within the parameters of
the Business Continuity Plan’s RPO. In other words, it the Learn more about cloud disaster recovery and
answers the question – “Up to what point in time could how Druva brings together backup, disaster
the Business Process’s recovery proceed tolerably given
recovery and archival for data center workloads.
the volume of data lost during that interval?”
RTO: Recovery Time Objective Sales: +1 888-248-4976 | sales@[Link]
The Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the duration of time Americas: +1 888-248-4976 Japan: japan-sales@[Link]
and a service level within which a business process must Europe: +44 (0) 20-3750-9440
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be restored after a disaster in order to avoid unacceptable Druva is the industry’s leading SaaS platform for data resiliency, and the only vendor
consequences associated with a break in continuity. In other to ensure data protection across the most common data risks backed by a $10
million guarantee. Druva’s innovative approach to backup and recovery has
words, the RTO is the answer to the question: “How much transformed how data is secured, protected and utilized by thousands of
enterprises. The Druva Data Resiliency Cloud eliminates the need for costly
time did it take to recover after notification of business hardware, software, and services through a simple, and agile cloud-native
architecture that delivers unmatched security, availability and scale. Visit [Link]
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