Salesforce Backups - Why protecting your data is not a myth
March 31 was World Backup Day. A good occasion to bring an often underestimated topic back into focus: The backup of Salesforce data. Because even though Salesforce is a highly available cloud service, it is still far from a real backup.
A Salesforce Admin's Guide to Data Lakes
In this video, Ben teams up with GRAX – a leading provider of Salesforce data protection solutions – to present a guide to data lakes for Salesforce administrators. It explains what data lakes are, how they work and how you can use your customer data where and when you want.
The myth of “automatic protection”
In his article on SalesforceBen.com Joe Gaska clears up widespread misconceptions:
- Myth 1: Salesforce automatically protects my data.
→ It is correct: Salesforce backs up data for its own purposes (availability, disaster recovery), but not for individual recovery requirements after user errors or data corruption, for example.
- Myth 2: Recycle Bin is enough.
→ Incorrect. Deleted data is only available to a limited extent and not completely – especially no relationships, metadata or older versions.
- Myth 3: Data export and reports are backup enough.
→ These resources are incomplete, difficult to automate and time-consuming to restore.
Why backups are really necessary in Salesforce
Ben McCarthyfounder of SalesforceBen, summarizes the risks in his article:
- Human error – e.g. accidental deletion or overwriting by users or admins.
- Incorrect integrations/data imports – Faulty middleware or an import can corrupt thousands of data records.
- Development problems – e.g. tests in the production environment that lead to data loss.
- Compliance requirements – especially in regulated industries or for GDPR requirements.
- Ransomware & malicious actors – also possible in the cloud, especially with far-reaching API access rights.
Why the native Salesforce backup is not enough
Salesforce offers the Backup & Restore Service a native solution, albeit with limitations:
- Limited functionality – There is a lack of differentiated restores, version comparisons or structured audit trails.
- Limited granularity – Recovery at object level, not at field level or for related data records.
- No control over storage location – Data remains in the Salesforce Cloud, which can be problematic for GDPR and data sovereignty
- Cost-intensive & difficult to automate – The service is optional, not part of all editions, and only covers basic requirements.
Grax, itself a provider of a backup and data lake solution for Salesforce, emphasizes that companies need more than a “safety net”: they need data sovereignty, versioning, monitoring and a historical view of your datato remain flexible, compliant and resilient.
Get more out of your Salesforce Data Lake
The same tool you use to back up and restore your Salesforce data is also the best way to capture, import and integrate that data into your DataOps ecosystem.
GRAX customers quickly realize that they can use the same data set to optimize or expand their business.
What backup options are available?
There are three main strategies for Salesforce backups:
- Manual data export (weekly/monthly): Free of charge, but inflexible, incomplete and not automated.
- Third-party solutions (e.g. Grax, OwnBackup, Spanning): Comprehensive, audit-proof, API-based – with a focus on fast recovery.
- In-house developments via API: Flexible, but expensive to maintain and legally risky (e.g. with GDPR).
Recommendation: Automated backup with Grax
As an official partner of Grax in the DACH region and EU we recommend Grax as a powerful and GDPR-compliant solution for:
- Real-time backup of all data & metadata
- Versioning and differentiated recovery
Historization & Restoration at field level
Compliance functions incl. audit trail
- On-premises or cloud hosting options
- Integration into existing IT strategies (e.g. data lake, historization)
A demo of Grax can be found under this link: GRAX Demo
Conclusion: Backup is part of the Salesforce strategy
Salesforce is powerful – but it is no substitute for a dedicated backup system. Companies with critical data, compliance requirements or complex processes in particular need a professional solution.
logicline provides support – from the needs analysis to the installation and ongoing operation of backup solutions based on Grax.
Get more out of Salesforce: AI, customer portals and data tools for greater efficiency
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