Tutorial: Backup and restore unified environments

Finance and operations apps are reimagined as an application hosted by Microsoft Dataverse. A typical task for administrators of these apps is to take backups, and restore those backups to unified environments. Traditionally, this operation is carried out in Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services for finance and operations environments. However, with unified environments, everything can now be managed in the Power Platform admin center.

In this tutorial, learn how to take a backup of an environment and restore to a unified environment.

Before you begin

The target environment in this tutorial is always a unified environment that contains finance and operations apps hosted by Microsoft Dataverse. To learn how to deploy one of these environments, go to Tutorial: Provision a new environment with an ERP-based template .

The source environment in this tutorial can either be a similar unified environment that contains finance and operations apps hosted by Microsoft Dataverse or a finance and operations apps environment in Lifecycle Services that was set up through the Power Platform integration.

Ensure that both the source and target environments are provisioned in the same region. For general information about how to backup and restore environments in the Power Platform admin center, go to Back up and restore environments.

Power Platform admin center

Begin the restore operation

In the Power Platform admin center, go to the source environment for which you want to backup or restore. From there, select the Backup + Restore button in the command bar.

To understand the system and manual backups—and how to take a manual backup—refer to Back up and restore environments.

To restore the environment, select the Restore or manage option, and then choose the appropriate system or manual backup. Then select the Target environment to be the unified environment, as shown in the below diagrams.

PowerShell

Load the PowerShell console and execute the following commands to backup the environment or restore it to a unified environment. For more information on how to install and use the PowerShell module, go to Get started with PowerShell for Power Platform Administrators.

In the examples below, an SPN with a client secret is used for the Add-PowerAppsAccount command. It's important to note that these parameters are optional, and the customer can log in with their current user credentials, omitting these parameters.

Backup via PowerShell

#Install the module
Install-Module -Name Microsoft.PowerApps.Administration.PowerShell

# Set variables for your session
$TenantId = "YOUR_TENANT_GUID_FROM_Microsoft Entra ID"
$SPNId = "YOUR_AZURE_APPLICATION_REGISTRATION_CLIENT_ID"
$ClientSecret = "YOUR_AZURE_APPLICATION_CLIENT_SECRET"
$EnvironmentID = "YOUR_ENVIRONMENT_ID_HERE"

Write-Host "Creating a session against the Power Platform API"

Add-PowerAppsAccount -Endpoint prod -TenantID $TenantId -ApplicationId $SPNId -ClientSecret $ClientSecret

    $backupRequest = \[pscustomobject\]@{
        Label = "this is a label"
        Notes = "this is a note"
    }

Backup-PowerAppEnvironment -EnvironmentName $EnvironmentID -BackupRequestDefinition $backupRequest

Restore through PowerShell

#Install the module
Install-Module -Name Microsoft.PowerApps.Administration.PowerShell

# Set variables for your session
$TenantId = "YOUR_TENANT_GUID_FROM_Microsoft Entra ID"
$SPNId = "YOUR_AZURE_APPLICATION_REGISTRATION_CLIENT_ID"
$ClientSecret = "YOUR_AZURE_APPLICATION_CLIENT_SECRET"
$SourceEnvironmentID = "YOUR_SOURCE_ENVIRONMENT_ID_HERE"
$TargetEnvironmentID = "YOUR_TARGET_ENVIRONMENT_ID_HERE"

Write-Host "Creating a session against the Power Platform API"

Add-PowerAppsAccount -Endpoint prod -TenantID $TenantId -ApplicationId $SPNId -ClientSecret $ClientSecret

    $restoreRequest = \[pscustomobject\]@{
        SourceEnvironmentId = $SourceEnvironmentID
        TargetEnvironmentName = "Restored Environment"
        RestorePointDateTime = $datetime.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss")
        SkipAuditData: true
    }

Restore-PowerAppEnvironment -EnvironmentName $TargetEnvironmentID -RestoreToRequestDefinition $restoreRequest