Apex Code Development You need to sign in to do that
Don't have an account?
Eager-2-Learn Server/Computer for backing up SFDC?
Hi,
Does anyone currently backup their SF database using DBamp or any similiar tool that is storing the backups through SQL Server? I was thinking to get away from the manual download of backup zipfiles each week I could automate backups to a SQL Server database.nightly. In addition, perform a weekly complete backup to a separate backup database named with the date appended. This give weekly snapshots just like the zipfiles.
I was hoping to get some feedback on computer purchases/architecture setup. Keeping in mind that IT will not be involved. In addition, do you know of any concerns that I should have
1. Purchase top end computer or stanard server (which is best)?
2. Purchase a backup drive for nightly incremental backups of the hard drive
3. Battery backup unit
4. Install SQL Server Purchased version
5. Install DBamp
6. Right some SQL backup and restore stuff
7. Schedule the backups
Or would you recommend IT involvement? IT currently does not support our SF ORG.
By know means am I a DBA but I have already set this all up on my own machine and it works with the exception of the actual scheduling. Not being a DBA is what scares me because if I don't know much about the details of maintenance behind SQL Server and my primary job is being a developer then Admin. I am just getting tired of manually downloading back up files every week.
Your feedback is appreciated as to help prevent any pit falls.
Hi,
You can use batch file to do all the backup stuff. I am doing this since long . It downloads records from objects everday in forms of zipfiles and stores in folders like daily backup and monthly backup. The zip files are appended with the date and time so that we can search them quickly if needed.
I hope this helps..
Regards,
j
Buying a server or computer for this would be serious overkill. All you need is some storage space.
You don't need to be running SQL Server anywhere to do the backups. You just need to keep the data. The format is pretty much irrelevant.
I would definitely recommend involving IT since they will probably have backup procedures in place already for other systems, and they can simply add salesforce to the list.
And here's another (hopefully persuasive!) reason to involve IT - If your data is important enough to be worth backing up (given that salesforce is extremely unlikely to break), then it is definitely important enough to get someone experienced at backup management to do that job.
s
thank you all for the feeback so far. I am aware of the Dataloader capability but wanted something that would require less maintenance and that is why I am leaning toward DBamp / SQL Server Express combo.
I have set this all up with a few batch jobs to kick things off using the Task Scheduler. Our current goal is to own all this and once we determine it works as we want then we are going to concider things to be moved under IT's roof for the reasons you mentioned. Once we get to that level I am sure they will have more ideas for best practices. Thank you all.
I backup our 12GB SFDC database (all tables) every night to SQL/Server using CopyStorm (www.capstorm.com). The price is right and there are no "per-user" type costs.
I also pull parts of SFDC to a MySQL database used by our web site every 15 minutes.
We us the SQL/Server copy for reporting to that is either nearly impossible in native APEX or just takes way too long. See a recent example using MS/SQL PIVOT operations at my blog:
http://gsmithfarmer.blogspot.com/
Nice Blog. Thanks everyone for sharing. I am now using DBamp and it has been working greate; however, I will check into the other tools that you mention such as CopyStorm and SQLForce.
Hi Tom,
You may also check COZYROC SSIS+ library. It is a third-party extension library for SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and it does include Salesforce adapters among many other useful extensions. The pricing starts at $399.95/Year and it doesn't require programming skills.