Glossary
Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
RTO is how long you can afford to be broken - if your website needs to be back up within 4 hours, your RTO is 4 hours.
What is Recovery Time Objective (RTO)?
The maximum acceptable length of time that a system can be down after a failure or disaster before causing significant business impact.
Why Should You Care?
RTOs drive disaster recovery investment and planning. Critical systems need shorter RTOs and more robust recovery capabilities.
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Real-World Example
An e-commerce site has a 1-hour RTO during peak shopping season but can tolerate 4 hours during off-peak times.
How to Protect Against Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
- 1.
Define RTOs for all critical systems
- 2.
Implement recovery capabilities to meet RTOs
Related Terms
Business Impact Analysis, Recovery Point Objective, Disaster Recovery
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