When Disaster Strikes, You’re Going To Want To Know The Difference Between RPO And RTO

Disaster recovery is an area of business you probably don’t like to dwell on. After all, as many as 24% of customers report turning away from a business after even just one notable downtime incident. That number increases to 70% if your brand becomes synonymous with two or more downtime experiences. And that’s not even to mention the costs you stand to lose from all of this. 

It’s the stuff of nightmares, and we understand why you want to put it in a box and pretend it will never happen to you. In reality, though, ignoring risks like downtime leaves you at a significantly higher risk of falling victim. Treating downtime as an out of sight out of mind issue definitely isn’t the best way to run a successful business with long-term prospects. Instead, you should ensure your defenses with the best disaster recovery plan possible. And, you’re sure to come across the terms RPO and RTO when you’re doing that. 

These terms refer to the key objectives that form the backbone of any business disaster recovery plan (DR plan). Each is crucial in its own way, and we’re going to help you by considering their differences and, finally, how you can ensure they’re both as strong as possible. 

What is RPO?

RPO is something known as a ‘recovery point objective’, which broadly refers to the amount of data loss your company can withstand during an unforeseen event like a period of downtime. RPO parameters are measured from the moment of downtime to your last saved backup, meaning that, if you last backed up your business data 24 hours before downtime occurs, you’re working with an RPO of 24. 

What is RTO

RTO is your ‘recovery time objective’, and refers to the amount of downtime your applications and servers can withstand before causing significant damage. In other words, calculating your RTO means setting a maximum length of time for operational restoration following a period of downtime.

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How the Two Differ

Reading those definitions, you might assume that RTO and RPO are quite similar issues, and you wouldn’t be wrong. There are undeniable crossovers, and RTO and RPO often go hand-in-hand within your disaster recovery plan. But, using the two terms interchangeably is a mistake you’ll want to avoid, as there are also key differences between these two requirements, as follows – 

• Purpose: Purpose is perhaps the main difference between RTO and RPO. RPO deals more specifically in data loss, while RTO is related to broader DR recovery times. To cement these differing purposes, it can be helpful to consider the ‘RT’ in RTO as referring to ‘real-time’ and the ‘RP’ in RPO as referring to ‘rewrite parameters’. 
• Priority: It’s also important to handle these focuses with differing priority levels. RTO, which focuses on system restoration, will often take priority, as it can also ensure that you stick within RPO parameters. That said, RPO also calculates the risk and overall loss of downtime periods, meaning that it’s an important consideration after initial outages are addressed. 
• Cost: Cost can also vary between RPO and RTO, and should be adjusted accordingly at different stages of your downtime journey. RTO will require a higher granular outlay during initial downtime outages, but spending should then shift to consider RPO and its ramifications. 
• Automation levels: RPO is a process that can and should be fully automated in the background, with regular automated backups ensuring the best possible protection without potential manual pitfalls. By comparison, automating RTOs that consider entire business structures is both difficult to manage and ill-advised. 
• Variability: Given that RPOs are typically determined via advanced processes, they hold a relatively low level of variability compared to RTOs in the moment, and are easy enough to calculate and control. Businesses can even back up data based on tiers of classification and importance. By comparison, RTOs are a lot more variable, and may change based on when downtime hits, and the nature that downtime takes. 

Optimizing RPO and RTO: Bringing the Two Together

While we’ve established how RPO and RTO differ, it’s important to note that there are also key crossovers, especially when it comes to optimizing and securing each parameter. That’s because both ultimately rely on your systems and your overall disaster approach. As such, optimizing both disaster parameters is typically a case of – 

• Ensuring the Best Backup

The quality, frequency, and location of your business backups can make a huge difference to the effectiveness of both RPO and RTO, and should be a pressing priority at all stages of business. Most obviously, more frequent backups can reduce RPO and thus ensure the shortest possible RTO time. Many businesses achieve this benefit via cloud solutions like the IBM i Cloud, which can be more affordable, more reliably backed up, and easier to recover for a better RTO and RPO in general. 

• Prioritizing Replication

Data replication, which involves making more than one copy of priority data, can also prove key, specifically to RPO, but also to overall RTO. Again, cloud migration can help with this goal as it ensures automated replication that doesn’t require excessive internal infrastructure. Replication can also be effective for informing a backup strategy, which may allow for more granular backups on recent data, that don’t need to worry about older, replicated storage. 

• App-Specific Approaches

It’s also beneficial to make RTOs and RPOs app-specific by identifying the applications, and the data stored in them, that are most vital for business processes and overall revenue generation. This ensures a more considered recovery approach, which prioritizes the most crucial business applications within your broader company infrastructure. That can both simplify recovery rushes and lessen both RTO and RPO in key areas. 

Conclusion

We get it – disaster recovery and everything that comes with it is undeniably daunting. But, trust us when we say that it’ll seem a lot more daunting if you don’t have a firm grasp on terms like RPO and RTO. Avoid that by familiarizing yourself with their differences, similarities, and relevance to your disaster recovery plan.

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