Salesforce to Retire Data Recovery Services Effective July 31, 2020

Salesforce, Inc. announced its plan to retire data recovery services effective 31-July-2020.

Why?

“The data recovery process does not meet our high standards for customer experience due to the length of time and reliability of the process. This process takes a minimum of 6-8 weeks to complete and we cannot guarantee 100% data recovery.“

Data Recovery Retirement

With the safety net removed, Salesforce customers must look elsewhere to plan for BC and DR solutions. Salesforce has referred customers to its app marketplace, the Salesforce AppExchange, to search for 3rd party backup and recovery alternatives.

A search on the Salesforce AppExchange on February 20 yielded 182 results! How is one to sort through all of these options to determine which is the best fit?

Some good news is that Salesforce backup and recovery solutions generally fall into one of two categories:

Hosted Solutions: This approach leverages vendor-hosted storage to extract Salesforce data to the vendor’s databases. This requires little infrastructure or management on the part of the customer, but the downside is that backup access and data security is in the hands of a 3rd party.
Self-Hosted Solutions: This approach leverages a Salesforce customer’s own machine or private cloud to extract and store Salesforce data. This allows each business to control data access and wrap security around the backup database as needed. There is also additional flexibility inherent to a self-hosted database such as unlimited retention of archived records. The downside is that this approach requires more infrastructure and database management expertise.

Read the Guide for Selecting a Salesforce Backup and Restore Partner for a no-nonsense list of scenarios, questions, and requirements Salesforce customers must consider when planning for a reliable backup and recovery plan.

If you do decide to go with the self-hosted approach, consider Capstorm. It provides software to perform self-hosted Salesforce backup and recovery. Backup Salesforce on-premises or to a private cloud. Restore Salesforce records along with the record relationships – without CSV’s or manual data patching.

Capstorm’s solutions have been listed on the Salesforce AppExchange since 2011, and Capstorm operates with two core philosophies: