Managed Disaster Recovery with Contracted RPO and RTO

It costs days. A backup proves the information survived; it does not say which machine it is restored to after a fire, who runs the operation, in what order or by when. We know companies with flawless backups that were out of action for 72 hours because no one had these answers.

Managed backup with local and off-site copies and verified restores is the foundation. Planned recovery is the structure built on top of it.

RPO: the limit on lost work

The Recovery Point Objective expresses the maximum acceptable loss in time. Set at 24 hours, the worst case costs a day of records; set at 15 minutes, it requires near-continuous replication. A clinic with 80 appointments a day and an accounting firm at month-end will never have the same figure.

RTO: the deadline to return

The Recovery Time Objective measures the gap between the disaster and critical systems coming back online. It dictates the architecture: two days of leeway needs only a restore destination; two hours needs replicas already in place. It is written into the contract and timed in every test.

Both are defined per system, based on the calculated cost of one hour without operating. The ERP may demand minutes; the archive, days.

In Portugal, the most likely disaster is not fire but encryption spreading through the network at night. A plan built for this attack has three barriers that generic plans ignore.

• Immutability Copies that not even stolen administrator credentials can encrypt or delete.
• Network quarantine Segmentation carried out before restart, so the replica is not infected.
• Identified clean point The most recent copy may already contain the malicious code; we choose the safe version.

Without preparation, the problem becomes one of business data recovery: slower, more expensive and with no guarantee of success. The subject links to managed cybersecurity and to the obligations of the NIS2 directive in Portugal.

1. Business impact: which systems bring the company to a halt, how much downtime is bearable and the cost of each hour.
2. 3-2-1 with immutability: three copies, two media, one off-site and an unalterable version for what is critical.
3. Replicas in place: critical servers replicated in a data centre in Portugal or in the cloud, with no waiting for new hardware.
4. Client contact assured: phone and email working while the main infrastructure is down, including the cloud or on-premises phone system and Microsoft 365.
5. Activation runbook: who declares the disaster, who is called, restore sequence, contacts and credentials, stored outside the affected systems.
6. Documented tests: one full test a year and partial tests each quarter, with real times set against the RTO.
7. Orderly return: moving back from the replica to the main infrastructure without losing what was produced during the crisis.

• Impact map RPO, RTO and estimated hourly cost for each system.
• Backup inventory Location, frequency, immutable versions and retention depth.
• Activation runbook Owners, start-up order and credentials held off-network.
• Contact plan How clients continue to be served during the outage.
• Test reports Timed results and approved corrective actions.

Through a 2022 public contract, the União das Freguesias de Massamá e Monte Abraão entrusted DataRoad with a new server, a UPS system and corporate backups. Processing capacity, power that withstands outages and recoverable information: at a public service counter, stopping means failing citizens.

The ongoing management contract, renewed by public tender, combines monitoring and support under Premium 365 (24×7), so that failures are stopped before they reach the public.

Managed backup and monitoring are part of every IT Unlimited plan. The full solution, with replicas, written runbook and tests, is included in IT Unlimited Premium 365, the tier for those who cannot stop; Essential and Premium clients contract it as a project. It works alongside the NOC, continuous on Premium 365, and the rest of our managed IT services.

For 20 to 50 workstations with one or two servers, allow four to eight weeks: two to four for analysis and design, and another two to four for replicas and immutable copies. The first full test takes place within the following three months.

We always start with the board, because only management knows the real value of an hour without operating. If you already have backups and simply want to know whether you could recover from them, we run that test separately, as an IT consultancy project with a report.

Headquartered in Alfragide with support across Portugal, we design and test plans for Portuguese companies and for international companies in Portugal, Europe and the US. See our managed networks and IT pages for Lisbon, Cascais, Oeiras, Sintra, Leiria, Coimbra and Porto, or the full map of service areas.

Read next: could you withstand 8 hours without power or internet? · backup restore in 30 minutes · what an hour of downtime is worth.

Not the time you would like, the time you can actually achieve. The first analysis is no-commitment. We provide this service only under an IT Unlimited contract; we do not carry out one-off jobs or sell standalone equipment.

More than 10 workstations · support contract · remote, on-site and phone support.

+351 211 459 950 * (weekdays, 9:00–13:00 and 14:00–18:30) · sales@dataroad.pt

*Call to a Portuguese landline.