Stephen R. Smoot, Nam K. Tan, in
Private Cloud Computing, 2012 To design a robust SAN extension system, there are two basic data recovery metrics to consider: recovery point objective (RPO) and
recovery time objective (RTO). The RPO metric determines how much data can be lost. It is based on how far back the last backup occurred or the point where data are in a usable state. The RTO metric determines how long you can be down until your systems are recovered. Smaller RPO and RTO imply higher cost. At the same time, smaller RPO mandates continuous data protection and synchronous replication whereas smaller RTO mandates clustering and hot standby systems. Larger RPO and RTO
imply lower cost. Remote vaulting would suffice for larger RPO, while cold standby systems would be able to meet larger RTO requirements. RPO and RTO tend to vary based on the application involved. These metrics tend to fluctuate between data that cannot be lost (i.e., low RPO but high RTO) such as financial and healthcare data as well as real-time systems that cannot be down (i.e., high RPO but low RTO) such as an E-commerce web server. Note:
In Chapter 4 we focused on WAN optimization in order to keep end-user performance up for cloud deployments. WAN optimization can also assist to keep RTO down and improve RPO. Nearly all WAN optimization vendors provide improvements for remote backup software, although performance will vary across vendors and models. Riverbed and Silver Peak are very strong for replication environments, with Riverbed providing application-layer
improvements for SRDF/A, for example. Read full chapter URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123849199000076 Domain 8Eric Conrad, ... Joshua Feldman, in CISSP Study Guide (Second Edition), 2012 Recovery point objectiveThe recovery point objective (RPO) is the amount of data loss or system inaccessibility (measured in time) that an organization can withstand. “If you perform weekly backups, someone made a decision that your company could tolerate the loss of a week's worth of data. If backups are performed on Saturday evenings and a system fails on Saturday afternoon, you have lost the entire week's worth of data. This is the recovery point objective. In this case, the RPO is 1 week.” [12] RPOs are defined by specific actions that require users to obtain data access; for example, the RPO for the NASDAQ stock exchange would be the point in time when users are allowed to execute a trade (the next available trading day). This requires NASDAQ to always be available during recognized trading hours, no matter what. When there are no trades occurring on NASDAQ, the system can afford to be offline, but in the event of a major disruption, the recovery point objective would be when users require access in order to execute a trade. If users fail to receive access at the point, then the NASDAQ trading system will suffer a significant business impact that would negatively affect the NASDAQ organization. The RPO represents the maximum acceptable amount of data/work loss for a given process because of a disaster or disruptive event. Read full chapter URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9781597499613000091 Domain 8: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery PlanningEric Conrad, ... Joshua Feldman, in Eleventh Hour CISSP (Second Edition), 2014 Recovery Point ObjectiveThe Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the amount of data loss or system inaccessibility (measured in time) that an organization can withstand. “If you perform weekly backups, someone made a decision that your company could tolerate the loss of a week's worth of data. If backups are performed on Saturday evenings and a system fails on Saturday afternoon, you have lost the entire week's worth of data. This is the Recovery Point Objective. In this case, the RPO is 1 week.”7 The RPO represents the maximum acceptable amount of data/work loss for a given process because of a disaster or disruptive event. Read full chapter URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B978012417142800008X Domain 7: Security Operations (e.g., Foundational Concepts, Investigations, Incident Management, Disaster Recovery)
Eric Conrad, ... Joshua Feldman, in CISSP Study Guide (Third Edition), 2016 Recovery Point ObjectiveThe Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the amount of data loss or system inaccessibility (measured in time) that an organization can withstand. “If you perform weekly backups, someone made a decision that your company could tolerate the loss of a week’s worth of data. If backups are performed on Saturday evenings and a system fails on Saturday afternoon, you have lost the entire week’s worth of data. This is the recovery point objective. In this case, the RPO is 1 week.” [21] RPOs are defined by specific actions that require users to obtain data access. For example, the RPO for the NASDAQ stock exchange would be: the point in time when users are allowed to execute a trade (the next available trading day). This requires NASDAQ to always be available during recognized trading hours, no matter what. When there are no trades occurring on NASDAQ, the system can afford to be off line but in the event of a major disruption, the recovery point objective would be when users require access in order to execute a trade. If users fail to receive access at the point, then the NASDAQ trading system will suffer a significant business impact that would negatively affect the NASDAQ organization. The RPO represents the maximum acceptable amount of data/work loss for a given process because of a disaster or disruptive event. Read full chapter URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128024379000084 Domain 6
Eric Conrad, in Eleventh Hour CISSP, 2011 Recovery Point ObjectiveThe Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the level of data/work loss or system inaccessibility (measured in time) resulting from a disaster or disruptive event that an organization can withstand.
Read full chapter URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9781597495660000060 Domain 7Eric Conrad, ... Joshua Feldman, in Eleventh Hour CISSP® (Third Edition), 2017 Failure and recovery metricsA number of metrics are used to quantify how frequently systems fail, how long a system may exist in a failed state, and the maximum time to recover from failure. These metrics include the Recovery Point Objective (RPO), RTO, WRT, Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), and Minimum Operating Requirements (MOR). Recovery point objectiveThe RPO is the amount of data loss or system inaccessibility (measured in time) that an organization can withstand. “If you perform weekly backups, someone made a decision that your company could tolerate the loss of a week's worth of data. If backups are performed on Saturday evenings and a system fails on Saturday afternoon, you have lost the entire week's worth of data. This is the RPO. In this case, the RPO is 1 week.”3 The RPO represents the maximum acceptable amount of data/work loss for a given process because of a disaster or disruptive event. Recovery time objective and work recovery timeThe RTO describes the maximum time allowed to recover business or IT systems. RTO is also called the systems recovery time. This is one part of MTD; once the system is physically running, it must be configured. Crunch TimeWRT describes the time required to configure a recovered system. “Downtime consists of two elements, the systems recovery time and the WRT. Therefore, MTD = RTO + WRT.”3 Mean time between failuresMTBF quantifies how long a new or repaired system will run before failing. It is typically generated by a component vendor and is largely applicable to hardware as opposed to applications and software. Mean time to repairThe MTTR describes how long it will take to recover a specific failed system. It is the best estimate for reconstituting the IT system so that business continuity may occur. Minimum operating requirementsMOR describe the minimum environmental and connectivity requirements in order to operate computer equipment. It is important to determine and document what the MOR is for each IT-critical asset because in the event of a disruptive event or disaster, proper analysis can be conducted quickly to determine if the IT assets will be able to function in the emergency environment. Read full chapter URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128112489000073 Disaster RecoveryScott R. Ellis, Lauren Collins, in Cyber Security and IT Infrastructure Protection, 2014 Identifying Business-Critical ActivitiesAn organization must have a thorough understanding of the critical business processes and the tolerance of a business outage to define objectives to succeed in the event of an outage. A successful solution employs a vertical and horizontal, or top/down approach to understand, identify, and map critical business processes, functions, IT systems, resource dependencies, and delivery channels. The organization must analyze the cost of disruptions and place them into resilience tiers to assist in defining operational availability and disaster recovery requirements from a business perspective. Additionally, Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) are perhaps the most important key metrics when architecting a disaster recovery solution. An RTO is the amount of time it takes to recover from a disaster event, and an RPO is the amount of data, measured in time, that your organization lost from that same event. The two business-driven metrics will set the stage for: •Media chosen to recover (disk, tape, etc.) •Location where data is being recovered •Size of the recovery infrastructure and staff needed Keep in mind that there are several intricacies to consider when assessing RTOs and RPOs. First, the objective in both stands for “objective” and should be defined as the target. If an RPO is five hours, then the architecture must ensure data loss of five hours or less. Therefore, when testing or recovering from a disaster, document and track actual thresholds achieved, including recovery point and recovery time. In many test cases, the time to recover does not meet the objective due to overhead time. Examples of overhead time are as follows: •Selection of staff and determination in DR teams •Declaration of the disaster and logistics to the recovery site •Consideration of massive chaos is involved in initiating a recovery from a disaster event When tracking and documenting actual versus objective, especially during testing, you will understand what is being accomplished in a given period of time. Figure 5.2 illustrates a flowchart of conflict resolution in the BIA and shows how time can be calculated when following the flow of the dependencies. Ultimately, this will allow a firm to defend future investment by honing your recovery methodologies and processes to better meet or exceed those objectives. Once the recovered data is made available and back to the application, the end users and owners of the applications only understand the RPO and RTO specific to usability of the application with an understood and acceptable amount of data loss in a specified amount of time.  Figure 5.2. Flowchart illustrating the formula used to calculate the time a department receives items and performs actions prior to passing onto another department. Read full chapter URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780124166813000057 Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for Small- and Medium-Sized BusinessesSusan Snedaker, Chris Rima, in Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning for IT Professionals (Second Edition), 2014 Replication to VMs in the cloudFor applications that require aggressive recovery time and recovery point objectives (RPOs), as well as application awareness, replication is the data movement option of choice. Replication to cloud VMs can be used to protect both cloud and on-premises production instances. In other words, replication is suitable for both cloud-VM-to-cloud-VM and on-premises-to-cloud-VM data protection. Replication products are based on continuous data protection (CDP), such as CommVault Continuous Data Replicator, NetApp SnapMirror, or object-based cloud storage such as EMC Atmos or the Hitachi Content Platform (HCP). The cloud greatly extends disaster recovery options, yields significant cost savings, and enables DR methods in SMBs that were previously only possible in larger organizations. It does not, however, change the DR fundamentals of having to devise a solid disaster recovery plan, testing it periodically, and having users trained and prepared appropriately. Read full chapter URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780124105263099748 Business Impact AnalysisJames F. Broder, Eugene Tucker, in Risk Analysis and the Security Survey (Fourth Edition), 2012 A major objective of the BIA is to establish the RTOs and recovery point objectives (RPOs) of business functions and data processes. Outage tolerances or RTOs are established based on the results of the analysis and the continuity priorities that are assigned. Management will then understand how best to allocate recovery resources to these functions. A shorter RTO will require the most expensive strategies; a longer RTO will allow for the selection of lower-cost availability options. Outage tolerance is the amount of time the organization can be without the use of a function before it has a detrimental effect on the company. The Recovery Time Objective is the amount of time by which the organization would like to have the process or function back in service. These terms are often incorrectly synonymous. The Outage Tolerance is the maximum downtime before the function or process is critically affected or the deadline in which the function or process must be restored to prevent severe impact to the business.1 Read full chapter URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123822338000157 What is RPO in data recovery?Recovery Point Objective (RPO) describes the interval of time that might pass during a disruption before the quantity of data lost during that period exceeds the Business Continuity Plan's maximum allowable threshold or “tolerance.”
What is a good RPO time?Experts recommend not implementing an RPO of more than 24 hours, as having a daily backup is a bare-minimum best practice for nearly all data at any time of day.
What is a normal RPO?Depending on application priority, individual RPOs typically range from 24 hours, to 12, to 8, to 4; down to near-zero measured in seconds. 8-hour-plus RPOs might be able to take advantage of your existing backup solution as long as it has a minimum impact on your production systems.
What is acceptable data loss?The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) describes the acceptable amount of data loss measured in time. It is the point in time to which data must be recovered as defined by the organization. The RPO is generally a definition of what an organization determines is an "acceptable loss" in a disaster situation.
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