Why Should You Be Concerned About Your RTOS And RPOS?

Disaster recovery (DR) is, by its very nature, difficult to plan for. But we’re all well aware of the problems associated with insufficient DR processes, policies and procedures.

If a business’ IT infrastructure cannot recover from a ‘disaster’ quickly the implications can be extremely costly. Simon Johnson, data recovery practice lead at GlassHouse Technologies UK, discusses two key recovery metrics that IT managers should consider when developing a DR strategy.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) are key measurements an IT manager needs to make the business aware of and provision for downtime accordingly. 

Both are recovery metrics that are calculated in time which provide quantifiable figures used to understand the tolerance levels of the business for application downtime and data loss. 

RTO measures the maximum amount of time that is needed to recover from disruption and for the business to be operational again. The more aggressive your RTO, the shorter the critical time period to restore the system to normal functioning. 

This, inevitably means more financial investment is required in high availability infrastructure, but perhaps a small price to pay in the long run if something does go wrong.