RTO (Recovery time objective)

RTO (Recovery time objective, “recovery time target”) – the period during which a system can remain unavailable in the event of a disaster or failure. In other words, the minimum time in which the system must recover to an operational state from any level of incident. A “system” is defined as an application, computer, server, network, etc. The key criterion for calculating RTO is the cost of system downtime.

RTO can range from a few seconds – for example, when replicating in the cloud, to several days when the backup is written to physical media – for example, magnetic tape. The choice is up to the customer: if it is a client portal of the bank, the downtime should not exceed a few minutes, if it is a personal site – it can “lie down” and a day.

To ensure a minimum RTO usually combine several Hi-End solutions. In the cloud, for example, these are software products VMware vShpere and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager in combination with storage NetApp. The RTO can range from 15 minutes to recover 100 machines to an hour and a half to recover 500 machines in a single Protected Group.