Recovery Point Objective (RPO) Explained
Recovery Point Objective, or RPO, answers one blunt question: how much data can you afford to lose? It is measured in time — the gap between your last good backup and the moment things went wrong.
Agreeing an RPO up front lets us design a backup schedule that matches what your business can actually tolerate.
How to Think About It
If you back up once a night and a failure happens at 5pm, you could lose a full day of work. That day is your RPO. A shorter RPO means more frequent backups.
Matching RPO to Your Business
A busy e-commerce store losing an hour of orders is a serious problem; a brochure site losing a day of changes barely matters. We set the schedule accordingly.
- Decide how much data loss is genuinely acceptable.
- Set backup frequency to stay within that window.
- Use continuous or near-continuous methods for the lowest RPOs.
| Business type | Typical RPO | Backup frequency |
|---|---|---|
| Brochure website | 24 hours | Nightly |
| Active web app | 1 hour | Hourly or continuous |
| Payment system | Minutes | Continuous replication |
If you need a hand with any of this, your Progressive Robot delivery team is ready to help. Raise a ticket from the Support area of your client portal or speak to your account manager and we will guide you through the next steps.