Which of the following best defines the recovery point objective?

In disaster recovery, these numbers determine how long your organization experiences downtime, and how much data could be lost. In this important context, what is a “good” recovery point objective or recovery time objective? The answer is not straightforward. A good standard RPO/RTO depends on the type of disaster as well as the maximum tolerable period of disruption.

First, it’s important to define the potential set of disasters against which you would like to protect your organization. Some disasters that require data recovery and backup include:

• Loss of data: This may be as simple as someone deleting a folder, or as complex as a case of ransomware or an infected database.
• Loss of an application: This refers to when changes to security, an update, or system configurations negatively impact services.
• Loss of a system: This includes when hardware fails, or, if you have a virtual server, when the operating system crashes.
• Loss of business location: In this instance, a disaster might include an electrical outage, fire, flooding, or even a chemical spill outside the building. The business facilities require recovery to an alternate location.
• Loss of operations: This is a complete stoppage of business operations—i.e., the worst-case scenario.

Each of these potential scenarios illustrates how important it is to consider your data, systems, applications, and physical location in your disaster-recovery strategy. These factors play a role in the RTO and RPO values. Once you’ve defined the particular disaster scenarios you’re hoping to protect against, you can prioritize the scenarios your customer is most interested in preventing, then implement data-protection features that match their RTO and RPO requirements.

A third figure factors into your RTO/RPO strategy: the maximum tolerable period of disruption (MTPD). This represents how long your customer is able to crisis-manage a system outage, and varies for every application and service you manage. Factors that play into this figure include tangible costs like employee wages, lost sales, weakened stock prices, and recovery expenses, as well as intangibles like reputational risk. It’s important to discuss the MTPD with your customer, and then apply that number to your RTO/RPO reduction strategy.

For example, for a given application, your customer’s maximum period of toleration might be two hours. That means your recovery time objective must equal less than two hours, and your data must be backed up less than every two hours to meet the ideal RPO. This gives you the guideline you need to create a physical and virtual system that meets the needs of your customer in the event of a disaster.

If your customer isn’t sure what their maximum tolerable period of disruption is, there are a few key questions that can help them set better expectations. Ask these questions to understand a customer’s RTO and RPO on a more granular level.

• How often does this type of data change?
• What does each minute of downtime for this service cost, either in lost revenue or lost productivity?
• Could you transact business with pencil and paper, if necessary, while this service is down?
• If you are experiencing downtime, how does it impact your customers?

Going through these questions with your customer can help you work backward to what you need to back up and how this data needs to be backed up to minimize risk in a disaster scenario.

What is RTO and RPO in SQL Server? 

SQL Server is a Microsoft-specific relational database management system that stores and retrieves data as requested by other applications. The server allows users to set up automated log backups to be restored from a standby server. With this log shipping, users can recover a fairly recent database copy—depending on the RTO and RPO of that process. Those RTO and RPO requirements are set by users, depending on their needs, budget, and any technological network limitations.

However, SQL Server RTO and RPO are not necessarily straightforward. In many cases, the process isn’t as fast as a client may imagine. They may have an ideal RPO in mind, but slow network speeds or an incorrectly configured backup can throttle this process. In addition, restoring a log backup in this way can involve transferring large amounts of data, and this process can easily exceed the determined acceptable RTO.

RPO or Recovery Point Objective is defined as the maximum acceptable amount of volume/data that can be lost from the point in time i.e., from the instant at which disaster, failure, or an unplanned data loss event occurs, measured in terms of an amount of time. RPOs specify the maximum age of the data worth of loss that the company can tolerate in-between backups from the time elapsed to the last point of time up to which data could be successfully recovered, before the disaster event.

For a successful RPO strategy, any business, large, or small should calculate the loss tolerance that occurs between backups. It is also equally important to determine the time frame while transitioning from disaster to operational status as per scheduled data backups. But how would you ensure the recovery strategies and technology once you anticipate the catastrophes? This is where you should engage in a sound Business Continuity Plan (BCP) that sets the maximum allowable threshold for the RTO or the interval of time with minimum data loss during the disruption.

Here’s an Example of RPO

When a disaster transpires and the most recent backup copy of data is 8 hours ago, and the standard RPO for the business is 10 hours, then we are still within the limit of the RPO as specified in the BCP.

Pro Tip: Fundamentally, RPO acknowledges the big question, “Up to what point in time can the recovery process be endured given the volume of data lost during that recess?”

What Does RPO Determine?

Recovery Point Objective or RPO is time-based and a crucial metric to determine the company’s loss tolerance. At its most basic, it will help you figure out how often you should backup the whole system to ensure business continuity. RPO helps determine the following,

• What is the minimum backup schedule frequency;
• How much data can be lost after a disaster causes significant harm to the organization; and
• How far back the IT team must go to employ recovery techniques without delaying the data loss against the expected RTO

Why Is RPO Important?

RPO computes the time it might take for an enterprise before the quantity of lost data exceeds the disaster recovery plan’s (DRP) maximum allowable tolerance or threshold. It is very critical as it helps an organization in:

• Improving the effectiveness of the Business Continuity Plan (BCP)
• Protecting essential applications without which the business cannot operate
• Assisting in determining your Service-Level Agreement (SLA) during disruption

How to Calculate RPO?

To calculate RPO, you must first define how much data you are willing to lose if the production system is unavailable. You also need to understand the cost of downtime-the time during which an application or system is unavailable for use. Then, build an inventory of every system and application used by your business as part of your Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) Plan. Additionally, you must calculate how long your business can afford to go offline risking customer trust and partner relationships. Don’t forget to consider internal teams and end users that may be affected by systems rendered inaccessible. These systems are categorized into tiers.

For instance:

• Tier 1/ Gold = 0 min – 1hr- This tier includes mission-critical business operations that cannot afford to lose more than an hour of data. E.g., banking transactions, CRM systems patient records, etc.
• Tier 2/ Silver = 1hr – 4hr- This tier represents semi-critical business units that can afford data loss of up to 4 hours. E.g., file servers, and customer chat logs.
• Tier 3/ Bronze = 4hr – 12hr- This tier includes businesses that cannot afford to lose more than 12 hours’ worth of data. E.g., sales, and marketing data.
• Tier 4/ Copper = 13hr – 24hr Businesses that deal with semi-critical information requiring an RPO of not less than 24 hours fall under this tier. E.g., human resource data (HR) and purchase departments.

Achieve RPO- The Zmanda Way

The most critical variable in the event of a disaster is your Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO). A solid DR plan includes the steps to fulfill two main objectives- the RPO & the RTO while keeping recovery time low.  

With seamless hybrid cloud setups, Zmanda’s disaster recovery solution strives to answer this problem. Zmanda offers the perfect stack to shape RPO that ideally fits your business needs. Through high availability native code architectures, the Zmanda backup engine accelerates recovery time by eliminating delay for an outage notification.

See it for yourself! Let’s get started with a free trial to strategize your data backup or request a demo. Got any questions? Please reach out to us here.

Which of the following best defines the recovery point objective quizlet?

What is your recovery point objective?

What is a definition of RPO quizlet?

What is recovery point objective in Azure?