What Is the Difference Between RTO and RPO?

Both RPO and RTO are critical factors in an effective business continuity plan. Business continuity establishes a schematic that helps a company recover after a disaster hits. Disasters, by definition, are rarely expected. Fire, flood, theft, these are all examples of disasters that can put a poorly organised business under permanently. A continuity plan is a roadmap that details how an organisation continues to thrive while rebuilding. This is where RPO and RTO come into play.

Recovery Point Objective

Recovery point objective, or RPO, is a complex concept geared specifically towards data backup. A business that relies heavily on data is vulnerable during a shutdown. Consider, for example, a company that maintains a database that feeds an ecommerce site. If disaster strikes the datacentre, the inventory disappears or becomes out of date. As part of business continuity planning, the management must figure out how long they can afford to have no access to that system before the business fails. Or in other words, how much data they can afford to lose before it has serious consequences for their business. The answer is crucial to developing a system backup and disaster recovery schedule.

If that same business has a revolving inventory, updating the backup every hour improves the odds of recovering after the main system goes down. Companies that have few changes to their database might be able to update once a week and still stay in business.
RPO is that deadline –the amount of data a business can afford to lose before the failure causes severe problems or shuts them down.

Recovery Time Objective

Recovery time objective, or RTO, is simpler. It is a target time for resumption of their IT activities after a disaster has struck. A business that can afford to take a week before being fully operational again does not need to put as much money into disaster recovery preparation as the organisation that needs the doors open within two hours.

A data entry operation has a short RTO, so the company should invest heavily in disaster recovery systems, maybe even a second DR site. This secondary location would maintain a full system backup with workstations able to support the business if the main office is unable to open. A small boutique would have a longer RTO and not budget for a disaster recovery centre.

RPO vs. RTO

RPO is specifically about data backup in order to maintain continuity. It is essential to determining how often a business should schedule data backup on their network. RTO is how long it will take an organisation to get back up and running to the Recovery Point Objective.

Although, one does not necessarily have anything to do with the other, they are both elements in disaster recovery and business continuity management. One is about how long the company can survive without data while the other is about how long they can take to reopen their doors. A company could have an RPO of three days, but an RTO of just one. For example, a restaurant may be able to operate without a computer system, but they lose money and inventory with the doors shut.

RPO and RTO are important business concepts for companies to consider when developing a system that allows them to survive after disaster strikes. Although not directly related, but they are both a necessary part of the process.

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Recovery time objective: how much time a application/service be unavailable in case of a disaster...

 Recovery point objective: what will be recovered..

the actual defination :)

RPO (Recovery Point Objective) refers to the amount of data at risk. It's determined by the amount of time between data protection events and reflects the amount of data that potentially could be lost during a disaster recovery. The metric is an indication of the amount of data at risk of being lost.

RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is related to downtime. The metric refers to the amount of time it takes to recover from a data loss event and how long it takes to return to service. RTO refers then to the amount of time the system's data is unavailable or inaccessible preventing normal service.