RTO defines how quickly you must restore operations after a disruption, guiding technology investments and recovery strategies.
Why it matters
- Determines the speed and complexity of disaster recovery solutions.
- Influences architecture decisions (hot standby, warm backup, cold storage).
- Sets stakeholder expectations during incident response.
- Drives runbook design and team readiness.
How to determine RTO
- Identify revenue loss per hour of downtime for each critical system.
- Review SLA commitments to customers and partners.
- Factor in compliance penalties for extended outages.
- Consider cascading dependencies between services.
- Test recovery procedures regularly to validate RTO targets are achievable.
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