Abstract: An amount of a resource, such as bandwidth, needed to successfully accomplish a target Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is estimated in a data processing environment giving two or more physical or virtual data processing machines. Time-stamped samples of a usage metric for the resource are taken over a usage period. These samples are later accessed and time aligned to determine an average usage metric at defined intervals. An expected tolerance for RPO failure allows determining a first assumed amount of the resource available to achieve a target RPO that is less than might otherwise be expected. These steps can be repeated for other expected replication failure tolerances to allow a risk versus resource available trade off analysis.