Platform Development Lifecycle and Deployment Architect Free Lesson

Free sample lesson from the Platform Development Lifecycle and Deployment Architect Cert Lab. The full course has 29 lessons and 4 full practice exams.

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System Design · SYS3 · part of the 15% section · about 20 min with practice

SYS3: Sandbox Types and Environment Strategy

You’ll be able to: match each sandbox type to a development, integration, testing or staging purpose, and plan refreshes, access and documentation for the environment set.

Four sandbox types, four purposes

A sandbox is a copy of your org in a separate environment, so you can develop, test and train without touching production. Salesforce Help describes four types, and the Well-Architected DevOps patterns say to match the type to the activity instead of using one type for everything.

Sandbox types, refresh intervals and typical use

Type	Refresh interval	Data	Typical use
Developer	Every day	No data automatically; 200 MB can be imported or created	Feature work, unit testing and rapid iteration, one dedicated sandbox for each developer
Developer Pro	Every day	No data automatically; 1 GB can be imported or created	Higher storage limit for testing features that rely on a subset of records
Partial Copy	Every 5 days	Sample of production data, up to 10k parent records and related child records or 5 GB; a Sandbox Template is required	Integration testing with representative data
Full Copy	Every 29 days	Full copy of production data; templates may be used but aren’t required	Performance testing, staging, QA and UAT at the end of the development cycle

Licenses come in bundles: the Developer Pro add-on includes 5 Developer sandboxes, the Partial Copy add-on includes 10 and the Full Copy add-on includes 15. Preview sandboxes are not part of the production deployment promotion path, and a team rarely needs more than two of them.

Run the environments, not just create them

Treat sandboxes as managed assets. Document the purpose, refresh schedule, data content and access of each one. Restrict Full Copy access to the roles that need production data. Release sandboxes that nobody uses so that licenses don’t sit idle. When several sandboxes need a refresh, start them gradually, because they are processed in series and not in parallel.

Exam trap

Don’t give every team a Full Copy sandbox. It is the slowest to refresh (29 days) and holds production data. Use Developer sandboxes for building and a Partial or Full Copy only where realistic data is needed.

Predict, then reveal

A team needs to test an integration against representative customer records, and refreshing weekly is acceptable. Which type fits?

Show the answer

Partial Copy: a sample of production data through a template, refreshable every 5 days.

Try it 5 min · a Developer Edition org or a sketch pad

Write the four types as a column and note the refresh interval of each from memory.
Place four activities (feature build, integration test, UAT, performance test) in the right type.
List the documentation you would keep for each sandbox in a strategy.

Practice questions

Ten exam-style questions on this lesson. Answer each one before you open it.

Question 1. According to the Well-Architected patterns, how do individual developers use Developer sandboxes?

A. As the main location for UAT before the changes go to production for release
B. For feature work and rapid iteration in a dedicated sandbox
C. As the shared integration test environment for the teams in a program
D. To hold a full copy of production for data migration checks and staging