Infrastructure · Disaster Recovery
RPO & RTO
Recovery Point Objective is the acceptable data loss window; Recovery Time Objective is the acceptable time to restore service.
FoundationalUpdated 2026-09-01
Overview
RPO drives how often data is protected: a one hour RPO requires protection at least hourly. RTO drives how recovery is performed: a four hour RTO for a large database rules out restoring from cold archive storage.
Both must come from business impact analysis and be agreed by service owners. Objectives set by IT alone tend to be either unaffordable or quietly unmet.