Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the maximum acceptable length of time a system or service may be unavailable after a disruption before the impact becomes unacceptable. It sets the target for how quickly recovery must occur and directly shapes the redundancy, failover, and backup architecture required, since a shorter RTO generally demands more capable and costly resilience.
Category: Resilience & Availability · Subcategory: Business Continuity · Part of the AIDC Technical Terminology reference.