Top Considerations for Choosing the Right Salesforce Backup & Restore Solution

Odaseva

Mar 28, 2022

Odaseva and SalesforceBen recently teamed up to host a webinar about our favorite topic…. Salesforce backup and restore!

You can watch the webinar on-demand here, or continue reading for a recap of the session.

Consideration 1: Why having a Salesforce backup and restore solution is important

Having a backup and restore solution is important because Salesforce data is critical and therefore must be protected against loss or corruption.

Consider what Salesforce data is important to your organization – how the loss of that data would impact your business? For example your Salesforce data likely helps you achieve a unified view of your customers and how they interact with your organization. The loss of that information would severely limit your ability to meaningfully interact with your customers.

And if you didn’t know that your organization is responsible for the data stored within Salesforce, you’re not alone. A recent ESG research report found that 35% of organizations believe that Salesforce is responsible for data backups. They’re wrong. Salesforce is only responsible for securing their cloud, and you are responsible for your data stored within Salesforce.

Part of this confusion comes from the fact that many organizations are confusing the availability of the SaaS service itself, with the recoverability of the data that it holds. This confusion can have serious business consequences if a data loss or corruption event compromises critical Salesforce data.

So how vulnerable is your Salesforce data? It depends on the organization, but there are three main sources of vulnerabilities to consider: internal, external, and provider.

The top causes of data loss for SaaS-based applications according to an ESG research report is a service outage/unavailability causing data destruction or corruption, closely followed by accidental deletion. The full breakdown is as follows:

Now you know why having a Salesforce backup and restore solution is important. So what are your options for finding one?

Consideration 2: The spectrum of options available to Salesforce customers

Organizations have three Salesforce backup and restore options:

• Free solutions which are ideal for smaller Salesforce Orgs with out-of-the-box features and minimal development (Tip: consider how much time will it take to implement a free backup and restore solution).
• Building your own solution offers flexibility and control on what to build and what technologies to build it with (Tip: consider how long and costly would it be to build a custom solution that meets both the business & technical requirements).
• Buying a solution allows your team to focus on delivering value to customers and employees, and helps build trust (Tip: consider how complex the procurement timelines will be).

The right option depends on your organization’s needs – the only “wrong” solution is implementing a Salesforce Backup and Restore solution when you first experience a data loss.

When selecting a provider for any of the above options, you should consider:

• Salesforce data backup considerations:
  • Ability to breaking chunk backup jobs with large volumes
  • Configure API for operation
  • Query Parent-child, Lookup relationships
  • Create Scheduled Jobs
  • Governor/API limit management
• Salesforce data restore considerations:
  • Backup is one thing but what about restoring data?
  • Correct insert/update per object
  • Mapping of deleted/restored IDs
  • Picklist fields
  • System Audit Fields 
  • Business Process Automation
• Salesforce managed packages considerations:
  • How does your backup and restore solution support Salesforce Managed Packages?
  • Access to objects, fields, and record types
  • Modeling to backup and restore object relationships at multiple levels
  • Workarounds for package automation
  • Awareness of limits around protected metadata

Now that you know what to consider when choosing the right Salesforce backup and restore provider for your organization, let’s talk enterprises.

Consideration 3: What requirements dictate the need for having an enterprise solution for Salesforce backup and restore

Salesforce data is different at enterprise scale. Data volumes are large, data models are more sophisticated, and integrations, regulations, and business processes are much more intricate. All this complexity dramatically increases the risks to your data. An enterprise-grade solution is needed to protect against these risks.

These are the specific requirements when choosing an enterprise solution for Salesforce backup and restore:

• Completeness: Does the solution cover all data types (Data, Metadata, Files, Deleted IDs, Recycle Bin)? Does it use all available APIs (REST, BULK, BULK V2, SOAP)? Are all levels of relationships mapped ready to restore? And you must be aware of Salesforce API limitations, too.
• Speed: Does the solution offer API Optimization to select the fastest API to extract data? Parallel API calls to multiplex data out of Salesforce? Does it use mixture of Full, Incremental and Ad Hoc backups?

• Care: Salesforce puts limits on API consumption as a way of keeping any individual customer from consuming a disproportionate amount of infrastructure resources. That means your actual API limits will vary based on your license agreement with Salesforce. Since restoring large amounts of Salesforce data can result in significant API consumption, you must consider that it’s possible to inadvertently cause new problems if limits are reached and other external processes are blocked from running. 
• Compliance: There are a number of compliance requirements to consider as there are a myriad of different data privacy and data residency laws around the world that can have serious consequences if they’re not met. The location of the backups, encryption methods, audit trail logging, and access security all must be considered when selecting a solution that is compliant with local and regional data laws.
• Practical considerations: Does the solution include a Managed Backup Services team you can rely on to monitor backups and optimize their performance? Is training or self-service support available and if so what is the “ramp up” time to learn to use the new system? Does the solution adapt to Salesforce changes like API deprecation, API improvements, and new standard and custom objects? Is the solution intuitive enough for your Salesforce administrators ? Is it easy to restore, or download, specific data, files or metadata? Can the solution accommodate multiple modes of consumption?

Factoring these considerations into your decision-making framework when choosing a Salesforce backup and restore solution will help you identify the right solution for your enterprise’s needs.

Odaseva is here to help. As the leading Enterprise Data Platform for Salesforce, our platform is designed for large data volumes and complex data models and offers Salesforce architects and platform owners the most powerful tools available to solve Salesforce data management challenges. It’s why Fortune Global 500 companies trust Odaseva to keep their data protected, compliant, and agile.

For more information, get our free whitepapers here or schedule a personalized demo today here.