Angela,

A couple of the things that you want to define in a backup SLA are
Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTO). 

Recovery Point Objective (RPO): How much data can you afford to lose and
still be able to survive and/or be compliant?

Understanding how much data loss is acceptable for a particular system
or application can have a major impact on how that system or application
is protected. The RPO of a system can help to set the importance of
backups and help to determine what an acceptable error rate is. For
example: If your RPO is 48 hours, then as long as you have a successful
backup within the 48 hour windows you are in compliancy with your SLA.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO): How quickly does a specific system or
application need to be recovered?

RTO is the period of time within which systems or applications must be
recovered after an outage. Know a system's or application's RTO can help
determine whether copies of the data need to be maintained on-site for
quick recoveries. An RTO can also help to set the importance of restore
requests.

Hope that helps!

Jason Ellis

-----Original Message-----
From: veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
[mailto:veritas-bu-bounces AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu] On Behalf Of Angela
Akridge
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 11:36 AM
To: veritas-bu AT mailman.eng.auburn DOT edu
Subject: [Veritas-bu] Designing SLAs

Hi!

Do you have any web sources that provide excellent best practices
about how to design an SLA for backup duration and restore duration?
What is a reasonable backup duration and restore duration? Storage
Magazine has plenty of articles, but not really anything that I can
"sink my teeth into."

(CISCO has detailed best practices, but the SLAs are specific to
networking:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk869/tk769/technologies_white_paper0918
6a008011e783.shtml.)

Thank you,

Angela
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