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 – Experts & Insights: How to Meet RTOs and RPOs

It’s not enough to simply lay out a plan on paper for meeting recovery time and recovery point objectives. To minimize downtime and data loss in a real-world situation, it’s crucial to plan before disaster strikes. As our experts discuss, this planning includes classifying your data and applications, setting internal expectations for RTOs and RPOs, and testing your plan.

Featured experts include Stephen Wynkoop, Microsoft SQL Server MVP; Robby Wright, Chief Technical Consultant from Abtech; Dennis Martin, President of Demartek; and Mark LeBlanc, Network Specialist at the Edmonton Public Library.

RTO versus RPO – Which is More Important?

Andrew Martin

With the constant evolution of data protection technology, combined with the increased use of disk-based technology as the prime media in data protection, the concept of “Recovery Point Objective” is now being factored into data protection plans at even the smallest IT departments.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) refers to how long it takes to recover your data and applications in the event of a system outage or data loss.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) refers to how granular your data recovery can be. Can you go back to the very last change or is the most recent recoverable version of a file - hours or even days old – acceptable?

In classic backup and recovery strategies, RTO has been the concept that has preoccupied most people responsible for data protection. If something goes wrong how quickly can I recover? Until very recently this question would underpin the recovery plans of the vast majority of requirements that came up across Asia. This held true from SME-type companies right through to large enterprises.

In the last 18 months, it is becoming increasingly common to see IT managers asking about RPO. Sometimes they do not use this exact terminology, but the requirement is similar. How can I ensure I record every change to all of my data and still have the ability to recover or roll back to any previous version of that has been created? In effect, this is what CDP promises to deliver, however, be careful – not all CDP is created equally. Some so-called “CDP” offerings are really continuous snapshots with a possibility that data changes between snapshots will not be recorded and hence will not be recoverable.

So why is RPO becoming as important as RTO?

Compliance is a big issue and drives some of the demand and interest in granular RPO. However, in smaller companies where compliance is still not a big prerequisite, we are still seeing big interest in technologies that deliver granular RPO. I believe some of the reasons relate to vendor messaging. Many vendors now offer a CDP type technology so the messaging is being pushed wide and far. However, it goes further than that. Implementing a technology that delivers truly granular RPO now costs little more – and sometimes less – than a traditional backup offering. This means that the cost benefits and business benefits really make sense for even the smallest companies.

Imagine a web design company, where for a few thousand dollars the IT manager can implement a solution that allows the designer to roll back to any previous version of a document they are working on. The business benefits in that instance alone are hard to ignore.

Further, if we consider that the vast majoirty of recovery requirements are for individual files, not complete system recoveries, we can also see that RPO-based technologies also assist in the pursuit of better RTO.

In truth, one is not more important than the other; the two concepts complement each other. Vendors will push the technology that suits their aims, but the truth is as cost comes down, all data protection strategies should combine technologies that deal with both of these concepts.

Related links:

Determining RPO and RTO for Remote Office Applications and Data

Video – How to Protect Remote Office Data with FASTRecover

You Don’t Have to Choose Between RTO and RPO

Video – Shameless Product Plug III – Virtual On-Demand Recovery