Backing up a CRM system

I was asked today what needs to be considered when backing up a CRM system so that it can be restored from a backup in an emergency.

This is a serious question for any CRM user - no-one like to think they may lose their data and all their work, but in addition a customised system would be difficult to replace if no complete backup is taken.

The question we have to ask is "how much work would I be happy typing in again". For many users, this means a nightly backup, so that we can always restore to the previous night. However, for some users, this is not enough and a more frequent backup policy is required. There are a number of differing ways we can approach this issue, but first we have to understand what needs to be backed up.

Your CRM data is held in two places. firstly, there is the database, which holds the vast majority of all the cusotmisations, and all of your user and configuration data. This is a SQL database and is easily backed up using SQL tools. However, there is another area that foten gets missed. When the system is customised by adding new entities or bespoke functionality, custom ASP pages are created. These also need to be backed up for a complete backup of the system. These can be found in the "CustomPages" folder which you will find inside the wwwroot folder underneath the CRM installation on the web server. You must ensure that these files get backed up whenever changes are made to them.

The database itself can be backed up as frequently as you require. I know one client that backs it up every 30 minutes. As long as there is no real impact on performance of the server, there is no reason not to do this if you absolutely insist on having up to date information. For a complete solution, you can always ensure you have the SQL database set to the "full data recovery model" which will include all transactions in the SQL log. A SQL database administrator could then selectively restore the database up to a period 2 minutes ago if they have the appropriate skills!

My recommendation is a nightly backup of the database, with backups kept for a full week, so that you can go back to any point in the last seven days.

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