Backups what is being backed up and how frequently

[Billy_C]

Hi there,

So I had a discussion internally about how safe the Powerapps system is en what we need to do in order to make it secure.

I know that system backups are being made, the only thing is that I would like to know how frequently are these backups and what is being backed up? Is it backing up every day, once a week etc. and is this only the data itself (records), or are custom tables, views and forms, business rules, connectors, business process process flows and other flows also being backed up aswell?

The reason I am asking this is because I want to know in case it's only data what we would need to about the rest do we need to manually take backups of our solutions and flows, or do you propose to use other third party tools to manage this?

Thanks in advance,

Billy Cottrell

[RusselThomas]

Hi @Billy_C ,

There are implications depending on what environment you're backing up, what type of environment you're backing up and whether it has Dataverse enabled or not.  

Perhaps start with this to get a better feel for backups in the Power Platform.  It might not answer all your questions, but it's a good start.

Kind regards,

RT

[Billy_C]

Hi @RusselThomas,

Thank you for the fast response, but I already checked the documentation which is the reason I went to ask these questions here. Thing is I have a production and a sandbox environment with both data verse enabled, and I know that backups are being taken, but there is no list of backups, so I don't know how frequently backups are actually taken.

I read that backups are being taken continuously, but it depends on the type of data full backup is once a week, differential backups 12-24h and transactional log backups every 5-10 minutes. So to which category belongs data from custom tables then? What about the custom solutions and all other parts that can be added to the solution, are they inside those backups as well?

The solution that we have is a full customized solutions so no OOB tables are being used actively except for notes. This is a CRM system that has been created with a model driven app and in the future it will be expanded with canvas applications and perhaps even portals.

There is no info about what is being backed-up except for "data", but I know that those solution and tables are made up of schemes so is this considered as data as well, because I don't know what is considered as data nor what data is being considered to take a backup from?

Thanks in advance,

Billy Cottrell

[RusselThomas]

Hi @Billy_C ,

Do you have power platform or D365 admin privileges?

You should see your backups from the admin portal - as to what goes into them, (or rather more importantly - what doesn't), I'm afraid I don't have a precise answer - but if you can recover one to a sandbox you should be able to see.  

Alternatively a D365 admin should be able to provide more insights into the backup content - although I would be surprised if it wasn't "everything in the Dataverse instance".

Perhaps @WarrenBelz or @RandyHayes have some insights?

Kind regards,

RT 

[Billy_C]

Hi @RusselThomas,

Yes I have admin privileges, but I am unable to see a list of these backups.

What I do is I go to https://admin.powerplatform.microsoft.com/ select my environment select backups and then choose restore or manage backups (or whatever it's called might be different). The only thing I can see is the date of the last available backup, but no information about the backups themselves. I guess I could check it out but is it possible to restore a backup to a different environment, so I have a production environment and a sandbox environment (for development) is it possible to use a backup from my production environment and create a backup environment? This way the production environment stays intact, and I can check what was being backed up.

Thanks in advance,

Billy Cottrell

[RusselThomas]

Hi @Billy_C ,

I'm no admin, but the way I understand the process you have to restore a backup to a sandbox environment anyway - I don't think it allows you to restore over your production instance.

Kind regards,

RT

[Billy_C]

Hi @RusselThomas,

So I just checked the docs about restoring backups and as you mentioned you need to restore it to a sandbox environment, either a different one or by converting the production environment to a sandbox one.

Except there is one more thing that I couldn't find out:

Let's say I create a backup sandbox environment and want to restore my backup to that environment. Do I need to enable a database for that backup sandbox environment or don't I have to enable it as it will be created with the backup anyways? Because it says it needs a sandbox environment but doesn't mention anything related to the creation of a database for that environment like whether it affects the backup or not.

Any ideas on this?

Thanks in advance,

Billy Cottrell

[RusselThomas]

Hi @Billy_C ,

I've honestly never done a restore myself, so I can't say. 

It does say "confirm overwrite of the environment" - so to hazard a guess I'd say whatever you have in there will be overwritten anyway, so it likely doesn't matter whether there's a DB in there already or not.  My money would be on "no" - you probably don't have to pre-create the db - but I am guessing 😊

Sorry I can't give you a definitive answer on this

Kind regards,

RT

[Billy_C]

Hi @RusselThomas,

So I just found that the sandbox environment does require to have a database. I think that is because you can only overwrite a database if one already exists? It does sound logical to be able to restore a backup in an environment without a database as in you are just restoring the contents of an empty shell. Except that I always forget that Power apps works from a database perspective, meaning that you can only restore a database if you have a database to restore it to. Which is the same except you actually keep the contents inside a holder inside the shell. Just a small detail 😋

So I just restored a backup and its pretty much a full backup of the environment except for like flows that aren't inside a solution.

It's good to know that It's possible to restore almost everything in an environment. Now I know that I have to place all my flows inside a solution to make sure it's inside the backups as well.

Thank you for all the help!

Kind regards,

Billy Cottrell

[RusselThomas]

Thanks for the feedback @Billy_C - good to know 😊

The Flows ring a bell, so doesn't that apply to canvas apps outside of solutions as well...?  

Just thinking out loud, but for non-solution enabled apps and flows, the COE toolkit has (or had, not sure if it still does) a Flow and App archive solution - it was essentially a self-service archive/recovery app for apps and flow that users could use themselves.  The idea with the toolkit was to notify users when their apps and flows hadn't been worked on in some time (like 6 months or something) and give them the option to archive and delete them - but also a view to recover archived apps or flows.   

The only difference is that instead of a SQL backup on the platform, you'd be archiving .msapp and .json files to SPO, but it wouldn't be a massive effort to customise the self-service backup/.recovery aspects of the app to an automated solution.  

Kind regards,

RT