Disaster Recovery Explained

The term disaster recovery describes the process required after a data loss event. This includes data recovery and might also involve replacing hardware that is no longer usable in the new IT infrastructure. The concept of Business Continuity involves more than just IT infrastructure and focuses on keeping business processes active without interruption even when exceptional events occur.

Before choosing a disaster-recovery solution, it is common to conduct a Business Impact Analysis:

1. Recovery Time Objective (RTO) – How long can a business function without a particular process or system? The recovery time objective focuses on the time required to get a system up and running again and its impact on overall business productivity. The period may range from 0 minutes (systems must be immediately available), up to several days (in some cases weeks).
2. Recovery Point Objective (RPO) – how much data loss can be tolerated? The Recovery Point Objective describes the period of time between two backups. It focuses on the maximum number of lost data transactions between now and the last backup that a business is willing to tolerate or risk. If no data loss is acceptable, the RPO is 0 seconds.

Sources

Wikipedia and company websites