What is RTO in Disaster Recovery Planning?
This post was originally published at https://invenioit.com/continuity/rto-disaster-recovery-planning/
The vast majority of operational disruptions can be prevented or minimized when businesses use effective RTO disaster recovery planning.
In this post, we explore how to set recovery time objectives (RTOs) at your organization and why they’re so important.
What is RTO Disaster Recovery Planning?
An RTO, or recovery time objective, dictates how quickly your business should recover from an operational disruption to avoid a significant negative impact. It’s a goal that organizations can apply to any aspect of their operations, including IT systems and services, to avoid financial losses from a slow recovery.
Before we get into the details of calculating an RTO for your business, let’s take a closer look at how they fit in with the rest of your risk management and continuity planning, including your RPOs (recovery point objectives).
RTO vs. RPO: What’s the Difference?
RTO and RPO both establish measurable objectives for business continuity and disaster recovery. But there’s an important distinction between these two planning metrics.
The main difference is that RTO sets recovery time targets, whereas RPO sets acceptable data loss levels.
·?????? RTO (Recovery Time Objective): Defines an acceptable amount of?time?for recovery.
·?????? RPO (Recovery Point Object): Defines an acceptable amount of?data?loss, determined by the availability of the most recent backup recovery point.
Examples of Recovery Objectives
For the purposes of this post, we’ll mostly be exploring the role of RTO with disaster recovery planning. But here are examples of RTO and RPO to further illustrate the differences.
·?????? RPO: If your organization determines that losing more?than four hours?of data would cause unacceptable losses or other adverse impacts on business?operations, then your RPO would be four hours. This means that your most recent backup recovery point should be no more than 4 hours old.
·?????? RTO: Aside from the age of the backup, the time it takes to restore that backup is also important. That time target is established by your RTO. If you determine that a data recovery lasting longer than 1 hour would cause an unacceptable impact, then your RTO would be one hour.
The Role of RTOs in Business Continuity Planning
Regardless of size or industry, every business needs a comprehensive business continuity plan (BCP). This is a working document that serves to identify the organization’s unique disaster risks, preventative measures and recovery solutions.
The primary goal of a BCP is to answer the following questions:
Question?three, above, is where the RTO factors into this planning. This critical metric helps you determine not?only how fast you can bring your operations back online but also how much time can elapse before your financial losses become unsustainable.
RTOs Explained
In the IT world, the term RTO generally refers to the recovery time of specific computer networks, data, applications, servers or other systems. It is the amount of downtime that a business can reasonably tolerate before the disaster becomes more devastating in terms of revenue loss, recovery costs or?other negative consequences.
For example, if your business could survive an email system outage for a period of six hours before experiencing a severe disruption to productivity, then your RTO for that particular system would be six hours, at most. Calculating this number helps your IT department set a timeframe to get back up and running and implement?effective measures for prevention and recovery.
Identifying your RTO?in relation to specific business systems?is thus a crucial part of your?business continuity planning. It’s a starting point for determining what kind of interruption the business can withstand?and what actions?must?be taken to meet those recovery time objectives.
Why is RTO Disaster Recovery Planning Important?
RTO disaster recovery planning involves developing strategies that allow you to?survive and minimize downtime, which is increasingly likely to occur and can have serious ramifications for?your business’s long-term success.
Downtime is Common
One in four businesses?never reopens its doors after a disaster and those that do face an uphill battle.
Whether you operate a small business or an enterprise, chances are good that you’ll experience downtime at some point. A?2020 study by LogicMonitor found that?96% of surveyed IT leaders?experienced one or more outages in the previous three years. Similarly, a 2022 report from the Uptime Institute shows that?80% of data center managers?and operators experienced an outage of some kind in the prior three years. These figures underscore the importance of calculating an RTO for your critical systems and incorporating it into your?continuity and recovery plans.
Downtime is Damaging
When your business experiences downtime, operations may slow or come to a complete stop.?The longer the outage lasts, the more severe the consequences become.??Possible outcomes include:
The financial impacts of downtime can be particularly staggering. Experts estimate that Facebook lost nearly?$100 million in revenue?due to a seven-hour period?of downtime in September 2021.?Likewise, in the single hour that Amazon was down in June 2021, it lost approximately?$34 million in sales.
For big businesses, losses totaling tens of millions of dollars are a mere blip. Unfortunately,?smaller organizations can be devastated or even destroyed by costly periods of downtime. Developing comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity plans that include your RTO can help reduce the likelihood that downtime will occur and shorten its duration if it does.
How are RTOs Measured?
Depending on the type of outage, your RTO may be measured in hours, minutes, days, weeks or even seconds. Essential systems and applications naturally have shorter RTOs?because they have a more significant influence on the business’s ability to function.
Consider a major online retailer being knocked offline by a cyberattack. While companies like Amazon have proven that they could likely survive a prolonged attack despite millions of dollars in losses, you can bet that these companies consider almost?any?amount of recovery time to be unacceptable. Thus, they put many safeguards in place to minimize the risks of downtime, and they may conclude that the RTO for major systems, particularly those that directly affect customers,?is only a few seconds.
In contrast, less important systems may have an RTO of several weeks or even months. A single computer failure at a small business, for example, may not be immediately devastating. However, if the issue isn’t resolved over time,?the losses incurred will eventually hit an unacceptable point, especially if they’re tied to idle workers and other dependencies.
How Do You Determine Your RTO?
Since an RTO?usually relates to operational costs and revenues, you will likely need to consult with different department managers and business units before establishing it. Ideally, this group of personnel will already be identified as the recovery team in your business continuity plan. You’ll need to collect key data points from each department to develop an accurate and useful RTO.
Cost of Potential Losses
One of the most important calculations you’ll complete is the costs that you could incur as a result of system failures. This should take into account expenses?like:
Long-Term Recovery Costs
Keep in mind that not all financial losses will be immediate. Downtime can cause considerable damage to your company’s reputation, which can have a lasting effect on customer loyalty and future sales.
The number you land on will depend on the structure, size and mission of your business, but be careful not to underestimate the potential costs. A 2022 study by Information Technology Intelligence Consulting (ITIC) revealed?that for 91% of mid-sized enterprises and large enterprises, a single hour of server downtime?costs at least $300,000. Even more frightening, 44% of those enterprises had hourly outage costs ranging from $1 million to over $5 million.
Critical Dependencies
The next question to answer is how?various operations depend on a single business system, application or technology. In other words, if one system fails, is the impact contained, or will it ripple out to other aspects of your business? Consider the impact of system failure across the organization, and identify the functions, services and processes that would grind to a halt (or even just slow down) if that single system were to fail. Systems with a high number of dependencies should, if at all possible, have shorter RTOs, whereas a lengthier recovery time may be acceptable for those with few or no dependencies.
Possible Workarounds
While your ultimate goal is to fully restore operations, you may be able to find temporary workarounds that help mitigate the effects of a system failure. Your BCP should identify a Plan B?that may help to partially restore operations until a full recovery is completed. This is an important process with RTO disaster recovery planning because it enables you to restore continuity while still working to achieve the recovery time objective.
Losses Incurred Over Time
Determine how the length of downtime will influence the cost of losses, and don’t assume that this is a straight?proportional line. For instance, it seems reasonable to say that if one hour of downtime causes your business to lose $5,000, two hours would cost $10,000. In reality, you may discover that the rate of losses increases exponentially with each additional hour of downtime as the situation escalates. Thus, while one hour may cost your business $5,000, two hours may cost $15,000. Be sure to factor those potential increases into your RTO formula.
Acceptable Recovery Time
With these numbers in hand, you have the knowledge you need to?determine the acceptable length of time for an outage to continue before it’s too late. That length of time is your RTO. Keep in mind that RTOs may vary based on factors like the time of year. Many companies face much greater losses during high sales periods leading up to the holidays, so they might institute shorter RTOs for those times.
Why Do RTOs Fail?
As part of your business continuity plan, you should be testing your business’s resiliency on a regular basis. This can include mock recoveries and other drills to ensure your teams can meet the recovery time objectives you’ve identified. Unfortunately, even businesses with ample preparation sometimes fail to achieve their RTOs in a real-world event.
Take note of these common mistakes to avoid falling short of your RTOs in the event of a disaster.
·?????? Unrealistic Expectations: Selecting an impossible RTO makes failure inevitable. Set realistic expectations based on a thorough analysis of your business’s unique risks and disaster-recovery preparedness.
·?????? Misguided Backup Management: Incomplete backups hinder recovery and extend the amount of time that it takes for your business to restore critical operations. Be sure you are regularly backing up:
o?? Files
o?? Network configurations
o?? System state information
o?? Applications
o?? System settings
·?????? Inefficient Backup Recovery Methods: Choosing the right kind of backup system can have a significant influence on how long it takes to recover from a data-loss disruption. A?high-quality hybrid backup?solution like Datto SIRIS, for instance, can instantly restore your data from both local and cloud storage locations, via a number of restore methods including instant virtualization.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1) What is the RTO in disaster recovery?
RTO stands for recovery time objective, which establishes an acceptable amount of?time?for recovering critical business systems or functions following a disruption. This is an important disaster recovery planning metric that helps companies set time targets for restoring their operations.
2) What are the 5 steps of disaster recovery planning?
Disaster recovery planning involves five key steps: 1) Identify critical systems and business functions, 2) Assess the risk of a disruption, 3) Develop recovery strategies and objectives, 4) Document recovery procedures in a comprehensive plan and 5) Regularly test and update the plan.
3) What is RTO planning?
RTO planning is the process of establishing recovery time objectives (RTOs) for critical business systems, services or operations. RTOs should be documented in an organization’s disaster recovery plan to establish how quickly systems must be recovered to avoid a significant negative impact.
Conclusion
RTO disaster recovery planning requires time and resources that smaller businesses may feel could be better spent elsewhere. However, with the ever-present risk of downtime putting the future of your company in the balance, taking the time to calculate an RTO is a small price to pay.
In addition to determining a realistic RTO with their recovery planning, organizations should also work toward shortening?the time it takes to recover from a disaster. Developing strong plans and recovery protocols, supported by technology such as reliable data backup solutions, will ensure a swift, seamless recovery.