A few weeks ago, my colleague Gilles explained you the concept of RPO.
Today, I want to show you practically how to calculate this RPO in order to see if it fits the needs of your company.
But before all, a small refresh about RPO because it is really important to fully understand the meaning of this concept. RPO stands for Recovery Point Objective. It is defined as being the maximum tolerable period in which data might be lost. In other words, it is the last full backup you can restore from in case of disaster.
So the calculation of your real RPO is quite simple, it is the frequency chosen to perform a full backup. It might seems obvious that making regular backups is crucial for your business, but we often notice that companies achieve a full backup only once a week (most of the time during the weekend) because the backup process is taking too long to be fulfilled during working days (and nights). So if we compare that to the definition, it means that those companies will have a RPO of maximum 1 week (depending on when the disaster happens).
The aim of the article was to explaine how to calculate a RPO... However, if you were expecting a theoretical mathematic formula, you might be disappointed. But there is one tip I can share: the most simple and effective way to calculate your RPO is to address a question about your backups to your IT manager or partner. You can ask him for example: "When did we take our last backup?". His answer will be your RPO.
It's obvious that backing up your IT infrastructure will not guarantee 100% the continuity of your company but it is the first crucial step !
In a future article, I will share how to determine a good RPO for your specific company and situation.
