Recovery time objective, Recovery point objective, and Recovery tiers

  • Release version: Washingtondc
  • Updated February 1, 2024
  • 3 minutes to read
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    Summary of Recovery Time Objective, Recovery Point Objective, and Recovery Tiers

    Organizations must prepare for unforeseen disruptions by classifying business processes into recovery tiers and determining acceptable downtime and data loss. Understanding Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is crucial for maintaining operational continuity during outages.

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    Key Features

    • Recovery Time Objective (RTO): This is the maximum time allowed for recovery after an outage without significantly impacting operations. Business users can assess RTO by responding to specific questions in the BCM UIB Workspace.
    • Recovery Point Objective (RPO): RPO defines acceptable data loss. IT owners can estimate RPO through assessments configured in the BCM system.
    • Recovery Tiers: Administrators can classify applications into tiers based on similar RTO values, such as Mission Critical or Non-essential. These tiers also define recovery expectations and support levels.
    • Recovery Timeframe: This timeframe begins from the moment a disruption occurs until normal operations resume. Administrators can configure various timeframes, ranging from immediately to several weeks.

    Key Outcomes

    By effectively utilizing RTO, RPO, and recovery tiers, organizations can minimize the impact of disruptive events. Proper configuration allows for quick assessments, ensuring that critical processes are prioritized and managed efficiently. This strategic planning enhances business resilience and operational continuity.

    Due to unforeseen disruptive events, the business processes in your organization can face a downtime. It is important to classify your business processes in the recovery tiers and calculate the amount of time and amount of data loss that your organization can handle without significant effect on the operations.

    Recovery time objective

    Recovery time objective (RTO) is the maximum amount of time a computer, system, network, or application takes to recover after an outage event or data loss without causing much effect to your business operations.

    The business users and IT owners can perform business impact analysis and technical impact analysis respectively by responding to the assessment in the BIA component in the BCM UIB Workspace. A sample view of the Assessments tab is shown in the following example.

    Assessments in the BIA.

    If you are the business user, you can estimate the recovery time objective for your business services and processes by responding to the Recovery time objective assessment in the Assessments tab. The questions are displayed in the Recovery time objective assessment tab according to the configuration set up by the BCM administrator. A sample Recovery time objective assessment with demo data is shown in the following example.

    Recovery time objective assessment.

    Recovery point objective

    Recovery point objective (RPO) defines the maximum acceptable data loss that a business process can handle without significant effect on operations.

    If you are the IT owner, you can estimate the recovery point objective for your data applications and systems by responding to the Recovery point objective assessment in the BIA. Based on the configuration set up by the BCM administrator, the questions are displayed in the Recovery time objective assessment tab as shown in the following example.

    Recovery point objective assessment.

    Recovery tier

    If you are the BCM administrator, you can classify a set of business applications that follow a similar range of recovery time objective (RTO) values in one type of recovery tier. For example, for the Mission Critical recovery tiers, recovery time objectives can be Immediately, one Hour, and four Hours.

    The recovery tiers and their associated recovery time objectives are displayed in the following example.

    Recovery tiers and their configured recovery time objectives.

    The BCM administrator can configure a recovery tier and set its recovery time objective as shown in the following example.

    Recovery tier and its recovery time objective.

    Recovery tiers are also associated with other organizational expectations such as levels of support, escalation, and communication. Recovery tiers are used in the following areas:
    • BIA scores and impact assessment result
    • Element recovery times
    Although there is no limitation to the number of the recovery tiers, an organization can set 4 to 6 recovery tiers. Recovery tiers are automatically calculated on BIAs and element RTO by selecting the nearest recovery tier maximum time.
    Recovery tiers can be classified as per their importance and criticality:
    • Mission Critical
    • Business Critical
    • Essential
    • Non-essential
    • Critical
    • Non-Critical

    Recovery tier configuration by the administrators

    For more information on how to configure a recovery tier in the Business Continuity Management application, see Configure a recovery tier for the business impact analysis.

    Recovery timeframe

    You can set up the recovery timeframe for a recovery tier. It is the timeframe that starts from when a disruptive event happens to the time when your business can resume usual operations. The BCM administrator can configure the recovery timeframe and its start time. You can configure different recovery timeframes as shown in the following example:
    • Immediately
    • 1 Hour
    • 4 Hours
    • 8 Hours
    • 24 Hours
    • 72 Hours
    • 1 Week
    • 2 weeks
    The following example shows the configured recovery timeframes in the Business Continuity Management application. Recovery timeframes.

    The following example shows the configuration of a recovery timeframe in the Business Continuity Management application. New recovery timeframe.

    For more information on how to configure a recovery timeframe in the Business Continuity Management application, see ../task/configure-recovery-timeframe-bcm.html.