The Art of CTO Business Continuity Planner helps organizations create and assess disaster recovery plans with RTO/RPO targets, failover strategies, and business impact analysis.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between RTO and RPO?
RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is the maximum acceptable time to restore service after a disruption — how long can you be down. RPO (Recovery Point Objective) is the maximum acceptable data loss measured in time — how much data can you afford to lose. For example, an RTO of 4 hours means you must restore service within 4 hours, while an RPO of 1 hour means you can lose at most 1 hour of data. These targets directly determine your infrastructure requirements: shorter RTO/RPO demands more expensive redundancy and replication.
How often should disaster recovery plans be tested?
DR plans should be tested at least annually through full failover exercises, with tabletop exercises quarterly. Critical systems warrant more frequent testing — monthly automated failover tests for database replication and backup restoration. After every significant infrastructure change, validate that DR procedures still work. The most common failure mode is untested DR plans that fail during actual incidents due to configuration drift, credential expiration, or process changes that were not reflected in the documentation.