Recovery point objective
Also known as RPO
The maximum amount of data, measured in time, you can afford to lose.
RPO sets backup frequency. A four-hour objective means backing up at least every four hours, because a restore returns you to the last good copy and everything after it is gone.
People consistently underestimate the cost of re-entering lost work. A day of lost transactions is rarely just a day of inconvenience.
Where this comes up
Recovery point objective sits inside our backup and disaster recovery work. If you are trying to work out what this means for your own environment rather than in the abstract, that is the page worth reading next, and a short call will get you a straight answer faster than either.
Related terms
Recovery time objective The maximum time a system can be unavailable before the impact becomes unacceptable. Incremental backup A backup capturing only what changed since the previous backup. Replication Continuously copying data or entire systems to a second location so a current copy is always available. Backup A separate copy of data kept so it can be restored after loss, corruption, deletion, or encryption.