Dynamics 365 Backup
Dynamics 365 Backup definition
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a cloud-based business applications system that offers different components of customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). It is a critical platform to help organizations of all sizes drive operational excellence across their entire business. Data backup for Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers comprehensive coverage for CRM data stored within the platform, such as files, customer records, transactions, behaviors and preferences, as well as order information, inventory and shipping.
What is Dynamics 365 Backup?
Third-party Dynamics 365 Backup solutions are dedicated to helping companies keep production and sandbox environments safe. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Backup provides total coverage for Dynamics 365 users, with full and incremental backups of entities, records, forms, and field attributes. Cloud backup services also can preserve metadata, properties, data structures, and more. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Backup establishes flexible control for user data, giving a company the ability to granularly find and recover data, directly restore data to original or new locations, or roll-back records to specific versions and points-in-time.
SaaS-delivered Microsoft Dynamics 365 Backup data protection can also safeguard these environments in a light-weight, cost-effective model – free from hardware expenses, routine maintenance, and large upfront capital investments. It works to meet internal and external SLA compliance. This means having all-inclusive data protection with unlimited storage, unlimited retention, and rapid recovery options to meet RPO and RTO standards.
Why is Dynamics 365 Backup important?
SaaS applications, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365, follow what is known as the ‘shared-responsibility’ model. In this model, the vendor is solely responsible for the application infrastructure, availability, and features/functionalities. The customer, on the other hand, is responsible for protecting their own data flowing through the application. And while Microsoft provides baseline data replication services, today’s organizations need purpose-built protection from data loss threat, such as accidental deletion/human error, data corruption from outages or third-party integrations, malicious insiders and bad actors, as well as cyberattacks (such as ransomware).
How does Dynamics 365 Backup work?
When considering Dynamics 365 Backup solutions, take your company’s unique priorities and data context into account. This can include:
Backup location – Your backup shouldn’t be stored in the same environment as your CRM data. While this can be convenient, it can make it incredibly difficult to overcome human error, cyberattacks, or natural disasters– as data backup copies are not separate from the source environment. Any significant crisis will render both your database and data backup copies unusable. Expert suggests best practices of isolating data backups off-site (via the cloud), to enable recovery, should source data or environments become impaired, deleted, or compromised.
Backup schedule – Backups should always be automated and regularly scheduled to minimize data loss. This may be once or multiple times a day, depending on your data usage and activity. Backups can be performed without any user intervention, with no bearing on end user access frequency.
Backup capacities – Businesses need flexibility and performance – and should look for solutions which offer complete and incremental backups. Complete backups capture 100% of all data files in your environment. This allows for a full snapshot of all your data at once – and can provide a baseline for backup and recovery functions. Incremental backups capture changes and alterations made over time. They supplement the complete backups by capturing clusters of data that have been changed, updated, added, or deleted. The combination of both complete and incremental backups allow for more optimized backup performance.
Emergency planning – While we hope there is never a need to recover from a network failure or database loss, the reality is, no one is immune. When implementing a backup solution for your CRM database, there should be an emergency recovery plan in place to see the recovery process through as flawlessly as possible. SaaS-delivered Dynamics 365 Backup solutions are hosted in the cloud, and help ensure your data recovery utilities are available and accessible in the case of emergency.
Backup and recovery testing – A backup and recovery plan will only be as good if it performs as needed under emergency situations. After a data backup solution is implemented, there should be regular testing to ensure the solution can promptly recover data. And while every business may follow a unique approach and strategy depending on database size, data growth rates, scalability needs, and budget, Dynamics 365 backup should always provide flexible and rapid options for data recovery, to help restore data in mass.
Benefits of Metallic Dynamics 365 Backup
With Dynamics 365 Backup, businesses of all sizes enjoy SaaS-delivered backup, built on Microsoft Azure. Companies get enterprise-grade protection for their Dynamics 365 production and sandbox environments – with the simplicity of SaaS. Benefits include:
- Comprehensive coverage – Metallic delivers dedicated data protection controls that span the Dynamics 365 Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, and Field Service CRM applications. Preserve entities, records, forms, field attributes, and more, all while maintaining metadata, properties, and permissions to maintain full record structure.
- Worry-free backup – With Metallic, you eliminate complexities. You get simplified data protection – that doesn’t feel like a full-time job. Metallic backups are 100% automated, giving you full and incremental backups without any manual intervention. Unlimited Azure storage and unlimited retention ensure better peace of mind, knowing that you’ll never encounter hardware, storage fees, or routine maintenance ever again. And with instant scalability, Metallic can effortlessly grow with your data, whether you’re supporting hundreds of users to tens of thousands of users.
- Granular control – Whether backing up production applications or seeding sandbox environments, Metallic gives users unrivaled control to restore data back to a specific location or points-in-time. Users can immediately search to locate relevant data sets, roll items or entire applications back to previous versions, or recover data back directly to production environments for development and testing efforts.
- Hardened Security – Built on industry-leading Commvault technologies with the power of Microsoft Azure, Metallic Backup for Microsoft Dynamics 365 offers a multi-layered approach to security. Hardened security protocols, such as multifactor authentication, advanced data encryption, and zero-trust user access controls prevent unwarranted access to systems and data. Backups are also isolated and virtually air-gapped to help ensure that data copies are immutable and safeguarded from malicious attack.
Does Metallic offer Dynamics 365 Backup?
Absolutely. Commvault, the developers of Metallic’s growing array of SaaS backup and recovery services, offer Metallic® Backup for Microsoft Dynamics 365 as part of its SaaS data management portfolio. Metallic Backup for Microsoft Dynamics 365 helps customers adhere to Microsoft’s shared responsibility model for SaaS application data management and covers backup and recovery for Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, and Field Service applications. Built with the power of Microsoft Azure, Metallic provides enterprise-grade data protection for both production and sandbox environments, to safeguard against data loss threats such as deletion, corruption, and attacks by malicious insiders and ransomware. And because Metallic protects all three Microsoft Clouds (including Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365 and Azure), customers can simplify their data management with broad coverage that safeguards multiple Microsoft SaaS applications.