RPO and RTO Calculator

Set RPO and RTO targets for each system tier and see which kind of protection each one implies, what downtime at the target costs, and how far today's setup is from it.

Inputs

Result

Enter a downtime cost and RPO and RTO targets for at least one tier to see the approach.

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How the calculation works

Each tier gets the approach that meets both of its targets: the stronger of the approach its RPO needs and the approach its RTO needs. The results say which target set it and what each target needs on its own. The bands have hard edges: a target close to one, such as a 14-minute or 16-minute RTO, deserves a look at the approaches on both sides.

These are ITBroker.com’s planning bands, not a standard or a vendor figure:

Approach	RPO it typically fits	RTO it typically fits
Nightly backup	24 hours or more	24 hours or more
Frequent snapshots	15 minutes to under 24 hours	4 hours to under 24 hours
Continuous replication	above zero, under 15 minutes	(sets the RPO only)
DRaaS or a warm standby site	(with replication)	15 minutes to under 4 hours
Synchronous replication	zero	(sets the RPO only)
Active-active	(any)	under 15 minutes

Nightly backup: a copy once a day; up to a day of changes can be lost and recovery is a restore.
Frequent snapshots: point-in-time copies every few minutes to hours, with copies kept off the primary storage, so recovery is a rollback rather than a full restore.
Continuous replication: changes copied to a second site as they happen, so only seconds to minutes of data are at risk. It sets how much data is at risk, not how fast you’re back.
DRaaS or a warm standby site: replicated systems ready to start at a recovery site, run by a provider or by you, so recovery is a tested failover.
Synchronous replication: every write reaches a second site before it’s confirmed, so no committed data is lost. A short RTO as well needs that copy ready to run, as with DRaaS or a standby site.
Active-active: two live sites run the service at once, so losing one costs little or no time.

Downtime cost at the target = downtime cost per hour × target RTO in hours: what one incident costs if recovery takes the full RTO. With a current RTO, the same sum at the current RTO shows what the gap is worth. The total adds every tier, as if one event took them all down at once. Lost data isn’t priced.

Gap = current RPO − target RPO, and current RTO − target RTO. A positive gap means today’s setup falls short by that much.

Targets are whole minutes, hours or days, or 0. Tiers are numbered, not named, so a shared link carries only numbers.

Worked example

Three tiers, with the current setup a nightly backup for tiers 1 and 2:

Tier	Cost per hour	Target RPO	Target RTO	Current RPO	Current RTO
1	$20,000	5 min	1 h	24 h	48 h
2	$5,000	4 h	8 h	24 h	24 h
3	$500	24 h	3 days	—	—

Tier 1: a 5-minute RPO needs continuous replication; a 1-hour RTO needs DRaaS or a warm standby site. The RTO is the stronger requirement, so the tier needs DRaaS or a warm standby site. Downtime at the target: 1 h × $20,000 = $20,000. Today’s RPO is 23 h 55 min longer than the target and today’s RTO 1 day 23 h longer; downtime at today’s 48-hour RTO would cost $960,000.
Tier 2: both targets fall in the frequent snapshots band. Downtime at the target: 8 h × $5,000 = $40,000, against $120,000 at today’s 24 hours.
Tier 3: both targets fit a nightly backup. Downtime at the target: 72 h × $500 = $36,000.

If one event took all three down for their full target RTOs, downtime would cost about $96,000.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between RPO and RTO?

The recovery point objective (RPO) is how much recent data you can afford to lose, measured back from the moment of failure: with a 4-hour RPO, losing up to the last 4 hours of changes is acceptable. The recovery time objective (RTO) is how long the system can be down before it's running again. RPO decides how often data is copied; RTO decides how the system gets back.

Where do the approach bands come from?

They are ITBroker.com's planning bands: rules of thumb for which kind of protection usually fits a target, not a standard, a vendor guarantee or a measurement. Real results depend on data size, change rate, links, tooling and how often recovery is tested. Use them to frame the conversation, then confirm a design with a timed test.

Why doesn't replication on its own shorten the RTO?

Replication keeps a current copy of the data somewhere else, which protects the RPO. Getting back still needs servers, networking and access ready to run that copy. Without them, recovery is a rebuild. That's why an RTO from 15 minutes to under 4 hours maps to DRaaS or a warm standby site here, whatever the RPO.

How should we group systems into tiers?

Group systems that share the same business impact and the same targets, and that have to come back together. A common split is the few systems the business can't run without, the ones it can work around for a day, and the rest. Keep dependencies in the same tier or higher: an application can't meet a 1-hour RTO if its database is in a 3-day tier.

Why doesn't the cost include the data lost within the RPO?

The value of lost data varies too much to price with one rate: re-entering a few hours of orders differs from losing payment records. The cost here is downtime only: the hourly cost you enter times the RTO. Weigh the RPO separately by asking what re-creating that much work would take.