Jim’s Misfortune [1] It’s up to the Lending Department to enter Loan Applications into the company’s Mortgage System. [2] It’s a process initiated daily by Supervisor Jim. [3]

Twice each day, at 12 p.m. and at 4 p.m., [1] he sends the completed Applications to a third party to be scanned and returned to the lenders. [2] After that the Lending Department no longer has access to them. [3] This means that for the Mortgage System the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is 4 hours. [4]

If there were a system glitch, the Lending Department could easily recover Applications entered over the last 4 hours. [1] But suppose there was a massive failure, like if lightning struck at 3 p.m. on Wednesday [2] and fries the servers housing the Mortgage System. [3]

No problem you say. The Mortgage System is backed up every midnight, making it a 24-hour back-up cycle. [1] However, for the IT department to replace the server and restore the backups, [2] it will take 12 hours (RTO – Recovery Time Objective). [3] Only then can the recovered Loan Applications be entered into the system.[4]

Here’s the problem. The current RPO of 4 hours is way short of the 24 hour back-up cycle. [1] If a failure occurs anytime between 4 p.m. and midnight, the entire days Loan Applications will be lost. [2] If the failure occurs during the day, up to 4 hours worth of Loan Applications could be lost. [3]

Panic time! The restored Mortgage System is as of Tuesday midnight. [1] It’s missing all the work that was entered Wednesday. [2] Since the strike was after 12 p.m., all the morning’s work is gone. [3] Jim can only recover from noon to 3 p.m. [4] Jim quickly sees that an RPO of 4 hours is inadequate, but it too late. [5]

Solution. Either change the back-up cycle to 12 hours: noon & midnight. [1] Or increase the RPO to 24 hours by holding the Loan Applications until the next day. [2]