The driving forces behind backup decisions today are RPO and RTO. When combined with data volume and retention requirements, they establish the ways you categorize backup data, as well as the methods you choose to protect it.
RPO (restore point objective) represents the maximum length of time that can pass between backups and asks the question, "Just how much data can we afford to lose?" It's not unusual these days for some environments to demand to-the-minute, even to-the-second RPOs; nearly 20 percent of respondents to our reader poll said their data deltas would be measured in minutes or seconds.
RTO (restore time objective) refers to the length of time it will take to recover from a data loss. Conventional backup RTO calculations are usually based on moderate data interruptions and are different from those used for disaster recovery/business continuity purposes, which may take into account loss of facilities as well. An interesting note: Although more companies are adopting offsite data replication for disaster recovery, more than half are rolling the dice as to whether it will work when needed--only 26 percent of our poll respondents said they test their data-protection/disaster-recovery architectures monthly; 21 percent do quarterly checks.
Although RTO and RPO are the primary objectives, other concerns exist. Data growth-rate estimates have receded from the wild levels of a few years ago, but corporate data structures are more complex, and the need to secure unstructured data hasn't abated. Encryption, uncompressable file types (audio, video and image files), and the increasing need for 24/7 data services has strained system capacities and shrunk the backup window. To add to the confusion, backup needs are stratified into these categories: conventional backups, disaster recovery and long-term archiving.
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