Salesforce Data Backup & Archiving: The WHEN, WHYs & HOWs of it

Before we discuss the quintessential Salesforce data protection solutions or data archiving solutions, let’s discuss what is Salesforce. Most enterprises use CRM platforms like Salesforce because of the way it eases & streamlines the business processes & helps them accelerate their journey to success. Salesforce itself functions on the foundation of ‘data’, which not only rules the industry but is the prime factor behind the organization’s success as well.

As the company grows & prospers, so does its data. Being the bread and butter of the company, such a massive volume of data requires safe & reliable storage. Over time, this data begins piling in the primary storage, requiring constant editing, updating, storing, & sometimes deletion. Therefore, every time new data comes in, the storage issues & other limitations of the platform become more pronounced. Thereby, most enterprises end up with systems where most of the objects are overflowing with data that is too old and useless.

The major problem with Salesforce data is that it grows over prolonged time periods with new data becoming important and old becoming historical, often less important or redundant but not entirely obsolete. Deleting even such historical data doesn’t seem like a smart option because various Salesforce data retention and compliance directives govern this decision. This leaves scope for just two other options – either you can back up the data or archive it.

Though both Salesforce backup and Salesforce archiving are mechanisms for secure storage of data, yet they are not entirely similar in context. Users commonly misinterpret the two to be the same, but the truth is entirely different. Before moving forward with understanding the need for data archival & data backup in the Salesforce environment, it’s important to first understand the difference between the two.

While backing up Salesforce data means creating a copy of the partial or entire production data for quick restoration in case of data loss due to any unforeseen circumstances, Salesforce archiving includes moving historical, rarely-used Salesforce data out of production into some long-term data storage. Essentially, while backed up is just a copy of the original, archived data is the original data.

A Salesforce backup is commonly performed with the sole purpose of disaster recovery in case of accidental data loss or any malicious threat. But whenever a Salesforce archival is performed, it’s usually done to optimize the primary storage, reduce the storage costs, run data analytics, improve the CRM performance or to meet compliance & audit demands.

Usually when backing up the Salesforce data, the backed up data is stored in the same storage space. Whereas, in the case of Salesforce archiving, the archived data is moved out of the primary storage into some secure, low-cost third-party external storage.

Usually, data backup doesn’t serve the purpose of storage space optimization or performance enhancement as even the backed up data is stored in the same storage space, thereby filling it faster & slowing it down further. On the other hand, as archiving moves the data to secondary storages, it optimizes the storage space & enhances the application’s performance significantly.

Now that you have understood the difference between the two data storage techniques, we now move forward to discussing the need for implementing these mechanisms in the Salesforce Org. As both data backup & data archiving serve a different purpose, they are implemented according to the demand of the situation, owing to different business requirements.

Even with the best of intentions, Salesforce users & admins have found themselves in situations where large amounts of business-critical Salesforce data was either deleted or accidentally modified. Not only this, users with advanced permissions have also been known to mistakenly change the configuration settings, such as the custom fields, page layouts, or custom code, which are irreversible changes. Or the organization has simply been on the receiving end of a malicious hacker attack.

All the above scenarios can cause the precious Salesforce data to be lost forever which is a grievous mistake for the company. This is why it is always recommended to have an up-to-date backup of the entire system data. Primarily, Salesforce data backup is performed to protect the critical data from being lost forever & to overcome the looming fear of losing the data. Sometimes data backups are also used as means to adhere to different internal & external compliance guidelines.

Therefore, it is recommended to keep a regular backup of all data & metadata as well as perform a manual point-in-time backup before proceeding with any major data project within the organization so that there is something to fall back on in case something goes wrong. It is also important to be able to restore data (that is lost or corrupted) as soon as possible to maintain business continuity.

In this direction, our AppExchange application, DataArchiva Backup will really help you overcome all your fears of losing Salesforce data. This robust Salesforce data backup & recovery application allows organizations to back up their sensitive data (both full & incremental) securely to safeguard it from any possible disaster. This highly-scalable solution supports both manual & scheduled backups & also comes with a seamless recovery option. Get in touch with us to know more about DataArchiva Backup.

When it comes to Salesforce data archiving, it is simply meant to help organizations resolve the common challenges associated with having too much data (operational & redundant) in the Salesforce Org. These challenges can be increasing data storage costs, degrading CRM performance, difficulty in compliance and a hindered user experience. As redundant, legacy Salesforce data is moved out of the primary storage when performing Salesforce data archival, a hoard of benefits are associated with it.

The primary need for data archiving is storage space optimization. Archiving helps admins purge the Org of Salesforce data that is of limited day-to-day value but still occupies crucial space in the storage. Once the data is moved out of the storage, not only is the data storage optimized but the data storage costs also reduce significantly. Even the system performance, that was previously declining due to overabundance of data, improves drastically.

Through data archiving, organizations can conveniently adhere to their stringent data retention and compliance directives. As archiving gives organizations more control over their Salesforce data & the information processes, even the overall user experience and user proficiency is greatly enhanced. Even when the archived data records are widely available to anyone with relevant permissions, it still ensures that the archived data is safe & secure at all times.

In this direction, we provide options to archive the legacy Salesforce data, either in Big Objects or in different external storages. Using DataArchiva, the ONLY native data archival solution, legacy Salesforce data can be easily archived into Big Objects with 100% data accessibility & security. On the other hand, DataArchiva, our enterprise-grade data management platform, archives the Salesforce data at a lightning-fast speed into different databases such as Postgres, Redshift, MySQL, Oracle, & MS SQL by leveraging platforms like AWS, Heroku, Google & Azure. These solutions reduce the storage costs by 80-90%, boost productivity, and make compliance simple.

In the course of optimal management of ever-expanding Salesforce data and the improvement of its primary storage, both data backup & data archiving prove to be ideal solutions. The only factor to keep in mind is the business requirement, based on which it will be decided whether data backup is ideal or data archiving will suit the purpose. We hope this article helps you make the correct choice.