Podcast – A Quick Guide to RTOs and RPOs with Storage Expert Ray Lucchesi

Ray Lucchesi, President of Silverton Consulting

4 min 9 sec

In this Experts & Insights podcast, Matt Law, senior PMM at BakBone, talks to Storage Expert Ray Lucchesi of Silverton Consulting about recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs). Ray discusses how the criticality of business activities associated with an application and its data determines RPO and RTO requirements.

Video – Whiteboard Session with Matt Law – How to Protect Remote Office Data with FASTRecover



In episode #2 of the BakBone Whiteboard Sessions, Senior Product Marketing Manager Matt Law discusses how to protect mission-critical data and applications at local and remote offices by leveraging the capabilities inside NetVault: FASTRecover. Matt explains the benefits of simultaneous local and remote protection, 30-second recovery for applications and data, recovery of consistent data to any point in time, integration with existing backup applications, and the elimination of backup windows.

Determining RPO and RTO for Remote Office Applications and Data

Matt Law

The phrase “out of sight, out of mind” dates back to at least the 13^th century.  Essentially, the idea here is that something is easily forgotten or dismissed as unimportant if it is not in direct view.  Think about it.  At some point in your life (home or work), you’ve strategically placed an “IMPORTANT document” on the remaining clear space on your desk. As hours and days pass, other “not so important documents” and Post-it Notes begin to invade the sacred desk space that had once been dedicated to that “IMPORTANT document.”  While the value of the “IMPORTANT document” has not really changed, daily distractions and shifting piles have caused the “IMPORTANT document” to become lost in the mix and appear as “just another document,” one that you will eventually get to, eventually read and eventually take action. Sound familiar?

So how does this relate to RPOs and RTOs – recovery point and recovery time objectives – for remote offices?  Simple. Even though remote offices/branch offices (ROBOs) are indeed “out of site,” they should not be out of mind – particularly the mind of IT. Only by taking time to classify applications and data at your remote sites, can you ensure adequate protection AND recoverability.

Here’s an easy way to classify data:

• Mission Critical Data/Applications are those that could result in negative financial or legal impact on the business if they are lost for any period of time. Real-time data protection solutions often come into play here.
• Business Vital Data is just that. This data is vital to the daily operations of your business.  Plans for protecting and recovering may include bare metal recovery, backup to disk and perhaps even real-time data protection.
• Important Data may be subject to a higher rate of change. Unlike static data, if you were to accidentally delete important data, there would be a higher sense of urgency and a desire to get it back relatively quickly.
• Static Data doesn’t change much over time.Likely needs to be backed up once so that a copy does exist and can be accessed at some point if there is a requirement to do so.

So, don’t forget about the applications and data at remote offices. Don’t forget about your remote users. Take time to classify the data at these sites.You may find that the data protection solution you have in place to be sufficient in terms of delivering the desired RPOs and RTOs. However, factor in the need for recovery-ready offsite copies, seamless failover and failback and you may find that your current plan falls short. Only by first classifying remote site data can you begin to put a well-designed and comprehensive data protection plan into place.

You Don’t Have to Choose Between RTO and RPO

Matt Law

We’ve all read numerous press and analyst takes on RTOs (recovery time objectives) and RPOs (recovery point objectives) and front page news articles about high profile (and embarrassing) downtime and data loss incidents. RTOs are not as forgiving as they once were. Advances in data protection technologies have led to greater user expectations and demands. It’s the old, “give ‘em an inch, they’ll take a mile” adage.

In an increasingly competitive, fast-paced and connected society, organizations must have a thorough understanding of the consequences that bubble to the surface as a direct result of downtime. Think about it. What bad things happen as a result of a prolonged email outage? For instance, if you are faced with recovery of a 1TB Exchange database, how will the 8+ hours (on a good day…providing it’s a hiccup-free, clean recovery) of downtime impact you organization? What are the hard and soft costs incurred while waiting for Exchange to be put back in the hands of your users? How happy will your executives be when they find out that there will be no email access for the majority of the day? Even better, how much happier will they become when you inform them that the first recovery attempt was a wasted effort and you need to start from scratch? Word to the wise: at this point, it would behoove you to quickly update your LinkedIn profile and release the networking hounds. But this doesn’t have to be the case.

What bad things happen as a result of a prolonged email outage? For instance, if you are faced with recovery of a 1TB Exchange database, how will the 8+ hours (on a good day…providing it’s a hiccup-free, clean recovery) of downtime impact you organization? What are the hard and soft costs incurred while waiting for Exchange to be put back in the hands of your users?

With Virtual On-Demand Recovery from NetVault: FASTRecover you can make very large data objects available for use almost immediately after recovery has been initiated. Users can access the recovered data as soon as a brief recovery setup phase has been completed, in as little as 30 seconds, and to any point in time – without waiting for the full recovery to complete. For example, that 1TB Exchange database we talked about earlier can be mounted before the recovery is complete, allowing users to send and receive email.

If a call is made for data that has not yet been recovered from NetVault: FASTRecover’s Online Storage, Virtual On-Demand Recovery will grab that data and move it to the front of the queue. It’s that easy.

So let’s quickly review here. If you carry the weight of Exchange, SQL Server or Windows File Server applications and data availability squarely upon your shoulders, you don’t have to choose between RTOs and RPOs. You can fight the good fight with Virtual On-Demand Recovery.

For those of you who missed the cinematic debut of “Shameless Product Plug III – Virtual On-Demand Recovery,” you can find it here: http://blog.bakbone.com/2009/09/24/video-virtual-on-demand-recovery/.

Defining Your Recovery Objectives – Business Continuity is King

Matt Law

 With huge business impacts and negative publicity looming behind any type of e-mail outage, the impact becomes more significant. Exchange downtime and data loss can occur on many different levels with greatly varying degrees of probability. The fact of the matter is that e-mail interruptions are inherently unavoidable. Also, more often that not the “most manageable – quick fix” of interruptions snowball into much bigger issues that require days and sometimes weeks to fully resolve. No matter the size of the outage, it is important to realize the impact of the event, what it involved and, most importantly, how to handle the situation the next time it happens. This requires IT organizations to look closely at whether or not their current Exchange data protection technologies and processes are sufficient to meet the fast and often granular recovery needs of their organization.

The first step to any adequate protection for e-mail systems is identifying what is best for a particular environment. Most companies rely on Microsoft Exchange Server, which leads to a particular data protection approach with specific criteria. Data protection for Microsoft Exchange is driven by two user requirements: recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) ― the speed by which you are able to recover and resume minute-to-minute operations, as well as the age of the Exchange data recovered. 

When weighing Exchange data protection options, such as traditional backups to tape or disk, snapshots, replication or real-time continuous protection, IT managers must first have a crystal clear understanding as to the expectations of their organization surrounding Exchange recoverability – as well as the availability. Is Exchange truly business critical in that it’s closely tied to their organization’s ability to generate revenue and provide high levels of customer service?  What do their users expect in terms of RPOs and RTOs? What are the demands of regulatory agencies and the associated compliance requirements?

Once you have answered these questions and implement a reliable data protection strategy for your e-mail system, you will be armed with the ability to bring your business back on the grid when an unexpected event occurs. It is difficult to know just how stranded you would feel without having experienced a failure, but it is not difficult to look ahead, be prepared and empower your business.