Disaster Recovery Strategy: RPO/RTO-Driven Decision Framework

Calendar February 22, 2026
Infrastructure
Intermediate, Advanced
Dr-Strategy-Selection, Rpo-Rto-Analysis, Business-Continuity-Planning, Cost-Risk-Analysis
Disaster-Recovery, Rpo, Rto, Active-Active, Warm-Standby, Hot-Standby, Backup-Restore, Business-Continuity, Failover
Aws-Route53, Aws-Rds, Aws-S3, Terraform, Cloudwatch, Pagerduty

Disaster Recovery Strategy: RPO/RTO-Driven Decision Framework#

Every DR conversation starts with two numbers: RPO and RTO. Recovery Point Objective is how much data you can afford to lose. Recovery Time Objective is how long the business can survive without the system. These numbers drive everything – architecture, tooling, staffing, and cost.

The mistake most teams make is treating DR as a technical problem. It is a business problem with technical solutions. A payment processing system and an internal wiki do not need the same DR tier, and pretending they do either wastes money or leaves critical systems exposed.