A few weeks ago, my colleague Brice explained you how to calculate a RPO.
Today, I’ld like to share a practical case which I encountered with a customer. In this case RPO played a big role.
Not so long ago, during an appointment with the IT manager of an medium-sized enterprise, he told me he had some problems with his backup. I asked him some more questions to identify his need and I wrote down some complaints he had regarding his actual way of making backups.
Backup capacity
A first complaint was the capacity of his backup tapes. As the company can’t permit itself to lose more than 1 day of data (read: their RPO is equal to maximum 1 day), the current backup policy consisted of a daily full backup on tape. As years went by and business was growing, the data grew as well. Until the data of a full backup exceeded the capacity of his backup tape.
Tape handling
Easy, you’d think, just use a second one and there’s your solution. But this brings me to his second complaint: tape handling. Since he needed different tapes for a full backup, he also had more tape handling to do. This resulted in a loss of time and a lot of frustration.
Backup window
A last complaint I wrote down was his backup window. As the amount of data grew, the backup window grew as well. This to a point where his mandatory daily full backup started to take nearly more than a whole day.
This case perfectly shows what an impact RPO can have on your backup. Nice to know: this customer now uses our Remote Backup Service, which eliminated all 3 of his complaints he had with his old way of making backups.
