Don’t lose sleep or money over data recovery when you can prevent the issue with proper backup procedures. When people want to back up their important information, they either put it on a disc, memory stick, or upload it to the cloud. However, this is not enough for total peace of mind if an accident happens or someone loses interest in keeping the information safe after buying a new computer. If you have ever lost personal photos and videos because your hard drive failed, you know how much time and effort goes into trying to get them back. You may think that there are sophisticated ways of getting these files back, but most are not true.
If you are still reading this, that means that your backup failed for some reason. Now the question is what to do? Do not panic! Your data is not lost completely, but it would take effort to fix it. This time should be spent analyzing why first and ensuring the issue doesn’t happen again in the future. It’s better to spend a few hours right now than days later when you need to restore a huge amount of data (happened already).
The continued disappointing truth is that Salesforce does almost nothing for us, even if we pay them thousands of dollars per month. We must use third-party apps for everything related to Salesforce. And one of those apps I like best at this moment is for Salesforce data backup and recovery.
You may ask why I don’t use Salesforce data recovery and backup in-built tools. The answer is that an in-built backup/recovery tool does not sometimes work, mainly when the failure occurs during huge record sets (hundreds of thousands). There are some cases when it can be used, but my experience tells me to avoid this solution. It’s better to have smaller chunks of data backed up often than risk backing up all at once with backups failing.
Getting back what makes it so good? Well, this app works by making an exact copy of your production instance on another one located somewhere else (local or remote). You need two servers then for the same tier to be able to work with It has an option that allows you to do it locally.
During the backup process, all data is compressed into a single 7-zip archive file (not zip) which reduces the size by two times. After this, you can send this file anywhere – email or SFTP server, for example. If someone wants to get back some deleted records, they only need the last 7-zip archive file and select what needs to be restored within the Salesforce web interface. The app will extract everything needed then and restore the desired records in just minutes!
Impressed? Yes? I was too when I discovered this tool few months ago. So go ahead and give it a try. Note that you need a salesforce license that supports unlimited storage space to use this tool. If you don’t, and your backup often fails – will not help.
Of course, there are other options for Salesforce data backup and recovery as well:
* Data Export for Visual Workflow (you can restore the records manually via UI)
* Deleted Item Recovery (an old deprecated tool that does not work with custom objects!
* AutoBackup (not recommended as it doesn’t provide real-time backups)
A recent survey has found that 25% of all businesses have suffered data loss in the last 12 months. 89% of those companies have prioritized recovery or moved on to other ventures because of it. Considering that each lost record costs the average business $136,000, this is alarming news for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMB).
To truly understand the impact of data loss, it’s essential to realize that most companies are dependent on their ability to store customer or client information online for long periods, if not indefinitely. This means they need secure cloud storage solutions. One problem is that many SMBs don’t have dedicated IT resources; so instead, they must rely on the resources available from their cloud storage provider. Unfortunately, these resources are often insufficient to meet the recovery time objective (RTO) demanded by most SMBs.
The Recovery Process
As far as recovery goes, you should always have a backup strategy in place, even if it’s only for your most recent work. This is especially true for companies that use cloud-based applications.
Even though your company may survive data loss in the short term, it will still need to recover quickly and get back to work. It can be very costly depending on the cause of lost data, whether it’s something simple like deleting an important file or much more complex like physical damage due to hardware failure or power spikes which usually involves hiring someone else to recreate lost files.
Fortunately, there are several ways to prevent data loss. Most people think of backup in terms of their PC hard drive, and your desktop or laptop PC indeed needs a good backup solution, but cloud-based applications such as must be backed up in much the same way because they’re also susceptible to failure. The good news is that it’s relatively easy to take advantage of these tools and services if you know what they are and how to use them:
Regularly back up your data
Your mobile phone is an important accessory for doing business today. It makes an excellent storage device for backing up your data, especially when you consider how inexpensive memory cards have become. Dropbox is another online tool that creates automatic backups on a folder-by-folder basis. Plus, you can use it to share files with colleagues who need access to the same data sets.
Have a plan for recovering your data
You’d be surprised by how many companies have no recovery plan in place. You can get around this problem by using an online file sharing service like DropBox or SugarSync, which lets you recover lost data even if someone accidentally deletes it.
Find out what happened and why
SMBs are particularly vulnerable to security breaches because they have so few resources available to prevent them or minimize their impact when they do happen. This is why it’s imperative to determine whether your data loss was caused by hardware failure, software malfunction, or something else entirely. It’s also important to know how many records were lost, whether it’s just one or all of them, and what data was affected.
Do you need the data?
For most businesses, the answer to this question is “yes,” but there are always exceptions, especially if your company loses customer information. If this happens, you’ll probably be required by law to notify anyone whose personal information was compromised, so act fast when disaster strikes!
When disaster strikes, the amount of time it takes you to recover from a data loss will depend on how prepared you are because all companies move at different speeds. The good news is that cloud computing makes backups as easy as 1-2
