A technical deep dive into Veeam Backup for Salesforce

As you might have heard already, Veeam has released a new solution, Veeam Backup for Salesforce, aiming to help companies eliminate the risk of losing Salesforce data and metadata. Why backup Salesforce? If you don’t believe you need to back it up, read this first. With this new launch, I’d like to talk more about Veeam Backup for Salesforce’s technical aspects, as well as shed some light on interesting capabilities and architectural decisions we made.

Architecture

While developing this solution, we didn’t change our core data protection principles, and therefore delivered something we truly believe in. The idea of being able to control your data is crucial to every company according to our best practices. Essentially, this solution’s deployment is fully managed by the customer. The package can be installed basically anywhere (on premises or in the cloud) and the company will always retain access to the data as there is no SaaS vendor involved in the backup process. All you need to do is to provision a Linux server (CentOS 7, RHEL 7/8 or Oracle Linux 7/8) to install a package there. Once that’s done, make sure you have access to a PostgreSQL server, which will be used to host the Salesforce’s organization data (a brand-new database for each and every organization).

In common backup terms, this PostgreSQL instance will be utilized as a Veeam repository. However, this database isn’t going to be just one universal repository as we found it challenging to use it to store the other Salesforce data types. Organizations’ metadata is to be retained on the backup server itself, in a git-compatible repository, while files and attachments will be placed in one of the server’s folders with a unique name (check backup policy settings to find the exact location). This allows us to use the best storage option for each type of information. Moreover, due to this architecture, it makes it easy for us to provide support for multiple Salesforce organizations while making sure that their data will be secured and isolated from each other. All corresponding data assets will be placed into databases and file storage accordingly. Now, let me please use a product diagram to illustrate that architecture in simple icons and arrows.

Figure 1. Veeam Backup for Salesforce diagram

As for the product installation, much like Veeam Agent for Linux, it’s available in online and offline mode. The most important thing is to have a Veeam repository added to the list of server’s repositories so it’s as easy as running a simple “yum install” command and following instructions on a screen.

Backup

Within this product’s initial configuration, you’ll already have the first Salesforce organization added and the first policy automatically created. We’re using Salesforce-native APIs to pull out everything that can be pulled out, and after the first full backup, will be having forever incremental runs.

After your easy configuration, you’ll see the policy comes with default settings. Go ahead and edit them as you see fit. For example, you may want to enable a custom schedule for your most important objects (ex: accounts, contacts, opportunities).

Figure 2. Specify custom schedule per object

Another setting to look at is one that can help you with APIs, called utilization. With this threshold enabled, Veeam Backup for Salesforce will check what’s available before launching a backup policy and during the policy as well (which is important if there is another third-party application making API calls during backups). Additionally, the backup service will detect when to use Bulk API vs Rest API or SOAP. Depending on the type of the object and the increment size, the optimal API will be used. Also, due to the aforementioned architecture, we’ve got flexible retention settings, being independent for the data itself as well as files and attachments.

Now that we’ve looked at backup, let’s discuss the true star in this solution: recovery.

Recovery

You’re going to notice four different data recovery types right when you launch a corresponding wizard. Just pick whatever achieves your desired outcome and off you go.

Figure 3. Veeam Backup for Salesforce recovery types

As you back up your data and changes are detected, the complete snapshot of each record will be saved independently into the history table for this object. During restore, you can choose the version you would like to restore from. From a UI perspective, it’s similar to Veeam Explorer for Microsoft Active Directory functionality, as the recovery wizard helps you visually compare the backup state of the object with its production state and see the changes so you can act accordingly.

Another key capability will help you recover from an incorrect merge or issue with cascading deletion or update, is that you can restore the hierarchy for any record. Select the object(s) in question and enable the toggle “restore objects hierarchy,” so you can see inside hierarchy branches at a depth you need. Go ahead and restore the entire record’s tree to bring all dependent objects and their relationships back to the desired state.

Figure 4. Restore objects hierarchy

As there’s a good chance your environment has some advanced business logic and automated rules, which can potentially block restores or trigger undesirable side processes during the data restoration, you have an option to remedy that. You can instruct the product to disable (permanently or temporarily) all triggered automation for the user that is executing the backup and restore operation. This should make recovery an easier process and result in a better recovery success rate.

Conclusion

Besides all the backup and restore capabilities, we also have something to make the life of a backup (Salesforce) administrator easier. For example, they can make use of a few predefined real-time alerts for backup, recovery, licensing and connection issues, and get notified about those events via email or even slack.

They can also share access to the backup console and assign users various roles (Administrator, Backup Operator, Restore Operator and Viewer), being very specific about the management scope (only for this organization, this specific company, a combination of those or everything at once). Those roles can be assigned to the users of Azure Active Directory in a granular way, and the latter will serve as an identity provider for anyone accessing the console, so it’ll be very appreciated by IT and security teams in your company.

This was a quick look under the hood of Veeam Backup for Salesforce. We truly believe this product, based on core Veeam principles, is going to deliver leading data protection practices to your Salesforce environment, so you can always focus more on company business.

For more information:

• Download a 30-day Trial
• Read 9 Reasons to Backup Salesforce
• Watch a 4-minute Demo
• Download the Veeam Backup for Salesforce User Guide

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