How to design an effective Salesforce data backup & recovery strategy: A simplified approach

In today’s tech-driven world, is your Salesforce CRM data truly protected?  From customer info in Service Cloud to financials in Finance Cloud, every business function relies on this precious asset. How safe is your data from unexpected risks? 

Whether they’re storing customer information in the Service Cloud, inputting financial data in the Finance Cloud, or accessing proprietary documentation in their Sales Cloud, it won’t be wrong to say that nearly all the business functions flow through digital datasets. 

Protecting your Salesforce data is crucial due to potential risks like crashes or breaches that can disrupt business operations and lead to financial losses and customer frustration. A robust Salesforce data backup and recovery strategy is essential.

Many organizations need help with data backup and recovery planning. Data backup involves creating accessible copies of your data to recover from any loss or breach. Surprisingly, about 50% of businesses lack a backup plan. It’s essential to understand key aspects of a data backup policy before proceeding.

• All mission-critical Salesforce data should be backed up during the organization’s off-peak hours as this helps to avoid any performance delays during office hours.
• All data backups should be stored off-site, perhaps in the cloud, and not in the business’s primary location.
• It is important to ensure that all data backups are properly encrypted to protect data from falling into the wrong hands.
• It’s also essential that only a handful of the most trusted employees are allowed access to the backups to avoid any unwanted intrusions or accidental errors.
• Lastly, you must have complete access to your backed up data at all times, having the option to recover it at any time you deem necessary securely.

How to Create a Data Backup & Recovery Strategy

An ideal Salesforce backup strategy sets forth the importance of data and system backups; clearly defines the planning rules, executing & validating backups; and includes specific activities to ensure that critical data is backed up to secure storage locations. 

All the above mentioned facts are automatically taken care of by an ideal backup strategy. Now after knowing all this, we can move ahead and discuss the three important things that are crucial in creating a holistic and simple Salesforce data backup & recovery strategy

Ability to Backup Everything

To create an effective Salesforce data backup and recovery plan, ensure that your backup solution can cover all types of data, from spreadsheets and documents to financial logs and personal information. The solution should be able to back up data files, databases, applications, configurations, and any other essential components of your system. This comprehensive coverage helps reduce the risk of data loss.

Before implementing a backup solution, verify that it includes all necessary data types and components. A robust backup solution should not only protect your data files but also your databases and any related applications and configurations. This ensures that you have a complete backup to recover from any potential loss.

Types of Data Backup Models Offered

The next thing to take into consideration, when creating an efficient data backup strategy, is the different types of data backup models available for your Salesforce data. It’s good to remember that backup is not the ultimate goal but only a means to accomplish the higher goal of protecting critical Salesforce data. With this in mind, the most common backup types used are:

Full Backup: As the name suggests, a full data backup captures a copy of the entire Salesforce data, whereby a complete copy of all the data is made available in a single storage location. It is worth noting that even though a full data backup is considered to be the most reliable method, in essence, it is time-consuming and requires more storage space. Because of this reason, many backup strategies perform only periodic full data backups with intermittent incremental data backups.

Incremental Backup: In comparison to full backup, an incremental Salesforce data backup model only backs up that data that has changed since the previous full backup or the previous incremental backup. In this model, the backup solution records and keeps track of the time & date on which all the backup operations occur. Though this backup model is faster and requires less storage, a full system restore becomes challenging and time-consuming because not only the first full backup has to be restored but all the subsequent incremental backups have to be recovered as well.

Ability to Restore Data

Your Salesforce data backup strategy should prioritize data recovery as much as the backup itself. Backed up data is useless if it can’t be restored when needed. Data recovery involves retrieving and restoring data from backups to either the original device or a new server, ensuring that your business can recover from data loss or failures.

Effective data recovery helps restore your database to its proper state and improves reliability after unexpected issues. A solid disaster recovery plan is essential to quickly restore hardware, applications, and data, ensuring business continuity.

How DataArchiva Backup Makes Salesforce Data Protection a Breeze

DataArchiva Backup offers reliable cloud storage and near-instant recovery for Salesforce data. With easy customization, setup, and 24/7 support, our app, available on AppExchange, integrates seamlessly with Salesforce services like Sales Cloud and Service Cloud.

Featuring both full and incremental backups, DataArchiva safeguards your critical data and ensures its security in the cloud. This cost-effective, user-friendly solution also provides smooth data restoration, making it a perfect choice for long-term Salesforce data management.

To know more about DataArchiva Backup and how this solution has everything your enterprise has been looking for, please get in touch with us or schedule a demo here.

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DataArchiva is an enterprise data management application built for Salesforce that offers complete data management solutions including archive, backup, and seeding.