Devising a strategy for data backup

A key item to determine as part of a backup strategy is to have a rough idea of how much it's going to cost if access to some or all of the data was lost, and the cost of replacing that data if it is lost permanently. This is where the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) are important. The RPO defines the amount of data you can lose before a successful restore happens, whereas the RTO defines the amount of time a business can be without access to the data. The first one is a key driver in determining how frequently the backup should be running and the RTO is a key consideration for how much downtime you can afford when you don't have access to your data. It is important to note that the RTO and RPO mentioned here refer to the portion of the data and metadata that the customer is responsible for. Disasters that happen in the infrastructure for which Salesforce is responsible have very efficient RPOs and RTOs...