As a reactive Salesforce user, you must know that Salesforce follows a shared-responsibility model. While the CRM offers a secure cloud infrastructure to manage the data, the business is accountable for the protection of that data. This brings us to our question: how often do you backup your Salesforce data, if your critical business data resides in the CRM?
Despite all the glitches and data loss stories, if your answer is not yet a confident ‘daily or weekly,’ you are sitting on a ticking time bomb. The good news is that we have the solution!
DataBakup, a dedicated Salesforce backup & recovery app, provides comprehensive features to back up Salesforce data, metadata, and files. It comes equipped with full/partial backup capability, offers instant recovery, and empowers your business with uninterrupted continuity.
Let’s see how often a business should back up Salesforce data to enjoy zero downtime.
Does Salesforce Backup Your Data?
Among all the questions that circle your mind about Salesforce backup, this is the most crucial one. Ever thought about whether Salesforce backs up your data or not? And if it does, how regularly, where, and is the data recoverable?
Salesforce users often think that business data stored in the cloud is automatically secure and immune to data loss or deletion. However, that’s not true. Data corruption due to human error, integration issues, and malicious attacks can result in the loss of data integrity.
In reality, Salesforce offers automatic data backup capabilities through the native Salesforce Backup & Restore solution and the Data Export service. It allows you to schedule automated backups or manually export data. However, the native Data Export service’s manual options are limited to weekly or monthly intervals, and the native Salesforce Backup solution is a paid add-on offering more frequent automated daily backups.
DataBakup: A Purpose-Built Salesforce Data Backup Solution
How Often Does Salesforce Backup Data?
Salesforce does not automatically provide frequent full backups of your org’s data the way you might expect from a traditional backup solution. Instead, Salesforce offers a mix of native options that differ in frequency and scope:
- Weekly Export Service: Admins can schedule a weekly or monthly export of all data (CSV + attachments). This is manual and not continuous.
- Data Export API: Available for programmatic exports, but limited by API calls and usually used for scheduled weekly/monthly extracts.
- Report Exports: Can be run at any time, but only capture subsets of data.
- Data Recovery Service (Deprecated & Reintroduced): Salesforce briefly retired this, but later brought back a paid recovery service. However, this is more of a last-resort option and not intended as a routine backup.
- Metadata Backup (via Metadata API/Change Sets): You can manually or via DevOps tools back up configurations, but not transactional data.
By default: Salesforce retains deleted data in the Recycle Bin for 15 days, and field history tracking/audit logs have retention limits (from 18 months to 24 months, depending on the feature).
Limitations of Native Salesforce Backup
For some businesses, the traditional features of Salesforce backup might work, but it is not scalable and has limited coverage of metadata. It further lacks daily data backups, most backup options are not end-to-end automated, and there is no point-in-time recovery.
Not to mention files, attachments, chatter data, and complex relationships may not be fully preserved or easy to restore. You clearly need a reliable, third-party Salesforce data backup tool that overcomes all these shortcomings of the native Salesforce backup.
Who is Responsible for Salesforce Data Backup?
The responsibility for backing up your Salesforce data is shared. As mentioned above, the shared responsibility model of Salesforce states that the CRM will offer internal backups and platform-level security, while the business has to ensure data protection within the platform.
How Often Should You Backup Salesforce Data?
This clearly depends on your business needs. Most enterprises opt for weekly or monthly backups (full backup) and go for partial backups when there is any change in the data. For example, critical data that undergoes any change frequently should be backed up daily, whereas weekly backup should occur for the complete org, including its data, metadata, and files.
One thing to keep in mind here is to establish RTO and RPO metrics. It allows you to understand how much data loss you can afford before the business experiences a negative impact and how much data you are allowed to lose.
Why Use DataArchiva Backup for Salesforce Data
Now that you know that it is your responsibility to protect your data, an app that supports this activity is a boon. You must look at the capabilities of the app that fills the gap left open by native Salesforce data backup and offers features such as automated full/partial backup, point-in-time data recovery, instant one-click restore, bulk & record-level data recovery, audit logs, and much more.
DataBakup is a full-fledged Salesforce backup & recovery app, listed on AppExchange, that comes furnished with all these offerings. DataBakup provides:
- Automated Daily & Real-Time Backups: Go beyond Salesforce’s weekly exports with automated daily or even near real-time backups of both data & metadata.
- One-Click Restore: Restore records instantly, including parent-child relationships, without the complexity of manual imports.
- Comprehensive Coverage: Backup not just standard & custom objects but also files, attachments, metadata, and chatter data.
- Point-in-Time Recovery: Roll back to a specific moment before data corruption, accidental deletion, or mass update errors.
- Enterprise-Grade Security: Backups are encrypted (at rest & in transit), meeting compliance standards like GDPR, HIPAA, and more.
- Flexible Storage Options: Choose where your backup resides – cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.) or on-premises – to fit business and compliance needs.
- Compliance & Audit Readiness: Easily demonstrate data protection policies with detailed backup & restore logs for auditors.
- Cost-Effective & Scalable: Pay only for what you need with scalable storage and backup frequency options that grow with your Salesforce org.
How to Set up a Salesforce Backup?
When you are setting up the Salesforce data backup pipeline, having a checklist in mind will help with a smooth process:
- Start by identifying your current data amount and how much storage you require to backup all of it. You might need to move the backup outside of Salesforce, such as to SharePoint or S3.
- Have a list ready of all data objects (e.g., Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities). Don’t forget to include any custom objects and fields to ensure that critical data is always protected.
- Define your recovery goals and have a set RTO and RPO in mind to keep any potential damage to a minimum.
- Choose a backup tool that is compatible with Salesforce, fulfills your business requirements, and carries all the necessary features you would need.
- Schedule the backup as per your needs and set up the tool in such a way that it follows your defined RTO & RPO.
- Keep a track of your backup, test it regularly, and make sure the recovery works when you need it to.
Key Takeaways
- Salesforce offers limited data backup capabilities, lacking metadata backup, instant recovery, point-in-time recovery, and more.
- Automated backup is necessary with business growth, which is not possible with Salesforce's traditional backup capabilities.
- How often you should backup your Salesforce data depends entirely on your business needs.
- You are responsible for ensuring data protection for your business, while Salesforce would make sure to keep the platform secure.
- Data backup tools in Salesforce, like DataBakup overcome the shortcomings of native Salesforce backup and provide a comprehensive solution for backup and recovery.
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