Your recovery time objective is probably a lie, and here's how to fix it. Most organizations can't meet their stated RTO because they've never actually tested it.

In this episode of The Backup Wrap-up, W. Curtis Preston (Mr. Backup) and Prasanna Malaiyandi break down the hard truth about recovery time objectives. You'll learn why your RTO is likely complete fantasy, who should actually be determining these metrics (spoiler: it's not the backup admin), and what you can do to close the gap between your objectives and reality.

We cover the concept of Recovery Time Actual (RTA), the metric nobody talks about but everyone needs. Curtis shares war stories from his days at the bank, including that painful moment when his shell script backup system couldn't handle a 50-tape server. We discuss why you shouldn't feel like a failure when you can't perform magic, and how to have honest conversations with business leadership about what's actually achievable.

Key topics include:

- The difference between RTO (objective) and RTA (actual)
- Why business units, not IT, should set recovery objectives
- The importance of regular DR drills and testing
- Chaos engineering and the chaos monkey approach
- Tabletop exercises that actually work
- Cross-training your teams for real-world scenarios
- How to measure and report your actual recovery capabilities
- Dealing with deduplication systems that have terrible restore speeds

Whether you're a backup admin feeling the pressure, a CISO trying to understand your real risk, or a business leader who needs the truth about recovery capabilities, this episode gives you the framework to stop living in fantasy land and start building recovery plans that actually work.
Subscribe for more no-BS discussions about backup, recovery, and cyber-recovery. New episodes every week.

While you're here, Here's some other great episodes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZGn5xlYTec
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHz5hGZy0nY&t=2s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov834MWoBXg&t=2s

This YouTube channel is also available as an audio podcast!
https://www.backupwrapup.com

We also have a blog that I've been running for over 20 years!
https://www.backupcentral.com

I've also written four O'Reilly books! My latest:
https://www.amazon.com/Modern-Data-Protection-Recoverability-Workloads-ebook/dp/B093TQTBC3