Recovery Point Objective with a time perspective

 Usually the Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is only discussed as the data loss in the time between the last backup and the incident. But on most systems a point-in-time restore is not relevant after some time. After some time and backup generations most backups are becoming irrelevant, and can be deleted to save storage. A few backup are then kept for audit purpose and long term investigations.

A RPO plan could look lige this:

1. 0 to 42 days: Point-in-time
2. 42 days to 3 years: Week
3. 3 years to 10 years: Month
4. 10 years to 20 years: Quarter

Cleaning up backup data is also called remediation  of backup data.

Cleaning up data is not only the backup sets but also the metadata on the backups. But the metadata on the backup duration, size of backup set etc. could be useful with a high degree of detail for a longer time that the backup sets.