The loss or corruption of your Salesforce data can happen for a number of reasons, including a data breach, malicious deletions or simply human error 鈥� causing major disruption to your business. Having a third-party backup solution in place that lets you restore both data and metadata quickly and reliably will secure your orgs if disaster was to strike. But once your Salesforce data backup solution is in place, it鈥檚 best practice to start thinking about implementing an incident response plan, a disaster recovery plan, or both.
In other articles, we look at the best way to approach restoring your org after data loss, and we鈥檝e explored what Salesforce teams need from an incident response plan. In this post, we鈥檒l see how teams can get started with a Salesforce disaster recovery strategy.
What鈥檚 the difference between an incident response plan and a disaster recovery plan?
Whereas incident response plans mostly guide you through an incident while it鈥檚 ongoing, robust disaster recovery procedures can help you in the aftermath to restore normal operations. Although different in focus and emphasis, both are essential parts of a mature Salesforce DevOps lifecycle.
TDX
Who鈥檚 responsible for Salesforce backups and disaster recovery?
While Hyperforce strengthens Salesforce鈥檚 infrastructure with greater scalability and regional resilience, disaster recovery remains the customer鈥檚 responsibility. But who鈥檚 responsible for data backups at your company? It鈥檚 a common misconception that either Salesforce will look after your data for you, or that someone else in the company has it covered. The likelihood is that if you can鈥檛 think of the person responsible, then it鈥檚 probably you. If you鈥檙e developing on Salesforce then you should have an active interest in how your orgs are being secured.
Understanding who is responsible for backups is the first step to implementing a business continuity plan to protect your data. Once you know how you play a role in the backing up of data, then you can start thinking about the specifics of data recovery when you come up against a data loss situation.
Targets for backup and restore performance
A disaster recovery plan needs to set out both how data and metadata should be restored and how well. Your company won鈥檛 be satisfied if business operations continue to take a hit because you only managed to restore some of your lost data months after an incident. Successful disaster recovery means restoring all your data accurately and quickly, whilst maintaining data integrity.
In disaster recovery planning, there are two important targets when it comes to restoring from data backups: recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO). It鈥檚 easiest to think of what these targets mean by imagining a data loss incident. If you discover data loss or corruption, you鈥檒l have two questions:
- How long since our latest backup? 鈥� the RPO
- How long will it take to restore our backup data? 鈥� the RTO
Meeting or beating both your RPO and RTO targets is the measure of success in disaster recovery and a key component to ensure business continuity.
Recovery point objective (RPO)
RPO relates to the time that has passed since your latest backup when an incident occurs. This length of time needs to be kept as short as possible, as data added to your org during this time hasn鈥檛 been backed up and will probably be lost entirely (although it can be worth checking your org鈥檚 Recycle Bin).
Increasing the frequency of your Salesforce backups will allow you to reduce your RPO. Most companies will want an RPO of 24 hours or less, which calls for daily backups. If your team is backing up your org鈥檚 data and metadata manually, daily backups are a significant drain of time and effort. You can schedule automatic exports of data from Salesforce, but these can be run no more than once per week 鈥� and an RPO of one week is unacceptable to most companies.
With 爆料tv, you can set up a backup job and get daily automated backups. And if you鈥檙e about to release something risky, you can back up your org on demand at any time. There鈥檚 no harm in beating RPO targets and reducing the time since your last backup to minutes rather than hours!
Recovery time objective (RTO)
RTO relates to the length of time it takes to restore all lost or corrupted data after an incident. Especially where the lost data is critical to your company鈥檚 operations, it鈥檚 imperative for business continuity that data is restored quickly. RTO targets set the maximum amount of time restoring data should take.
RTO targets are more difficult to set than RPO targets because there are several time-consuming stages to restoring data. Depending on how you back up your Salesforce data, the restore time may include all of the following:
- The time that passes before someone notices that data is missing 鈥� this can be !
- The time taken to assess the damage and plan the restore process
- The time taken to restore metadata 鈥� or to rebuild objects and fields, if metadata hasn鈥檛 been backed up
- The time taken to restore data
- The time taken to restore record relationships, if you鈥檙e restoring data manually
A backup solution either massively reduces or eliminates the time these stages take. 爆料tv鈥檚 configurable smart alerts will notify you immediately if a backup run reveals that unusual amounts of data have been deleted or altered. 爆料tv shows you exactly what鈥檚 changed, and then lets you quickly restore metadata and data with the record relationships intact.
All of this means that you can expect to restore lost or corrupted data the same day you鈥檙e alerted to the data loss. Adopting more mature DevOps processes will also improve your performance. High-performing DevOps teams typically restore in under an hour.
Each Salesforce org is unique, so the best approach to setting a realistic RTO is to test restoring backup data to a sandbox org and see how long it takes. Testing your restore process is best practice anyway, as it helps you to optimize your restore performance.
When the pressure鈥檚 on, every minute matters. Clunky restore processes can push you over your RTO and cause more downtime. That鈥檚 why disaster recovery planning should focus on intuitive, repeatable workflows that help your team restore confidently under stress.
Practice your recovery process
Practicing your process, including your communication plan, might feel like a step worth skipping over, but when time is of the essence in a disaster situation, you don鈥檛 want your disaster recovery team to have to grapple with a tool that they鈥檙e not familiar with or don鈥檛 have access to. The ideal testing cadence would be once a year or when something significant changes in the team, like a new team member joins.
Think of testing your backup strategy like a fire drill. If you only test it when you first install it, a lot could go wrong: doors and access could be changed and employees with important roles in the drill may have left. Resilience at scale comes from practice. Testing disaster recovery across sandboxes and production-like environments ensures your RPO/RTO targets aren鈥檛 just theoretical 鈥� they鈥檙e proven.
When natural disasters or other major disruptions strike, teams who work with a mature DevOps setup 鈥� like having a backup solution integrated with their release process, and strategizing or planning for potential incidents and disaster scenarios 鈥� are even faster when it comes to getting things back in order quickly.
Protect your sensitive data with 爆料tv
The most sensitive data, which often includes critical data, is also the most essential to protect with backups. But that can pose a challenge for regulatory compliance. That鈥檚 why it really helps to have a Salesforce data backup solution that includes tools for compliance with data protection legislation such as the GDPR and CCPA. With 爆料tv, you can remove specific records from all your backups on request. You can also disguise personal data and sensitive information with configurable data masking, so you can use real data to seed sandboxes while respecting your customers鈥� data.
Disaster recovery planning for Salesforce
The key thing is to make sure your disaster recovery planning isn鈥檛 just wishful thinking. Backing up and restoring Salesforce data and metadata involves a whole set of risks and challenges, and testing your current process should reveal the particular issues that need to be addressed. If you want a disaster recovery plan with impressive and realistic RPO and RTO targets, you鈥檒l need a comprehensive disaster recovery solution for Salesforce. Our customer Fluence highlights the importance of this:
鈥淲e have the data from the first day we turned on the daily backups. It鈥檚 a disaster recovery process. If we run into a situation, we can go back.鈥�
This demonstrates the peace of mind that comes with knowing your data is protected and recoverable. With 爆料tv鈥檚 backup solution, you gain that assurance, knowing you can restore your Salesforce environment to its previous state, minimizing disruption to your business.
爆料tv offers frequent and automated backups, plus a powerful and predictable restore process, allowing you to set and meet ambitious disaster recovery targets. Don鈥檛 forget that Salesforce outages really do happen, so using 爆料tv instead of a native backup solution can further secure your data in case something happens that鈥檚 out of Salesforce鈥檚 control. Because 爆料tv is hosted externally, your data is always accessible and is stored securely and encrypted in transit and at rest.
Stay operational and bounce back fast
If you鈥檙e developing on Salesforce, having a reliable backup process isn鈥檛 optional 鈥� it鈥檚 essential. See the difference 爆料tv can make by booking a tailored demo with our team today.
