When conducting any cloning activities, there are risks involved such as loss of data or loss of development work. To minimize the likelihood of this occurring, there are three main things to consider.

• What is the agreed lead time?
• Is it regular?
• Is it known by everyone?
• Is there a Change management procedure

2. Communication

• Agree prior that each developer has to actively state they have completed their backup prior to clone commencement.
• Keep your email Out of box auto-reply set up.
• Put your upcoming leave in your email signature.
• Put an instance announcement on of upcoming clone.

3. Backup

• Not everything is in an update set.
• Whole instance backups (daily for 7 days + weekly for 2 weeks).
• Ideally, the person who created the update set should back it up.
• Standard update set update names.