RPO and RTO

How much data you can afford to lose (RPO) and how long you can be down (RTO) after a disaster.

Recovery point objective is measured back from the failure: with nightly backups, up to a day of data can be gone. Recovery time objective is measured forward: how long until users can work again. Both drive cost, since minutes instead of hours mean replication, standby systems and practiced procedures. They belong in the SLA only once a restore has actually been timed.

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Related terms

Backup (3-2-1 rule): Three copies of data, on two kinds of storage, one of them off-site, plus regular restore tests.
SLA (service level agreement): A contract that defines availability, response and fix times per priority, and what happens when they are missed.
SLO and SLI: An SLI is a measured indicator of service quality; an SLO is the internal target for it, stricter than any SLA you sign.

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