Two numbers, one budget
Recovery Point Objective is the maximum amount of data you are willing to lose, measured in time. Recovery Time Objective is how long recovery may take. Every backup decision — frequency, retention, storage type — falls out of those two numbers.
A nightly dump gives you a 24-hour RPO. If losing a day of orders is unacceptable, the schedule has to change, not the apology email you would have to send.
Write them down per database
Not every database deserves the same treatment. A reporting replica can tolerate a day of loss; a payments ledger cannot. Tag each database with its RPO and RTO, then set schedules and alerts to match, and review the tags whenever the application changes.
