Disaster Recovery Planning: RTO, RPO, and Building Resilient Systems
Introduction Disaster Recovery (DR) is the process, policies, and procedures for recovering and continuing technology infrastructure after a disaster. A disaster can be natural (earthquake, flood), technical (data center failure, ransomware), or human-caused (accidental deletion, security breach).
Core Principle: “Hope is not a strategy. Plan for failure before it happens.”
Key Concepts RTO vs RPO Time ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────> │ │ │ │ Disaster Detection Recovery Normal Occurs Time Begins Operations │◄──────────────────────────────────►│ │ Recovery Time │ │ Objective (RTO) │ │ │ │◄───────────►│ │ Data Loss │ (Recovery Point │ Objective - RPO) │ Recovery Time Objective (RTO) Definition: Maximum acceptable time that a system can be down after a disaster.
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