Explore On-Demand Sandboxes

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe how on-demand sandboxes differ from point of delivery (POD)-based sandboxes.
Explain the advantages on-demand sandboxes offer developers and development teams.

Commerce Cloud is now Agentforce Commerce, and B2C Commerce is now Agentforce Commerce for B2C. You might still see references to Commerce Cloud and B2C Commerce in Salesforce applications and documentation during this transition period.

A Commerce for B2C On-Demand Sandbox is a flexible and scalable environment that you can use to develop, test, and deploy Commerce for B2C solutions. On-demand sandboxes offer enhanced performance, quicker provisioning, and greater control over usage. These sandboxes are helpful for teams implementing continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) processes.

Compare On-Demand and POD-Based Sandboxes

On-demand and point of delivery (POD)-based sandboxes both provide isolated environments for development, testing, and deployment within the Salesforce ecosystem. On-demand sandboxes (ODS) offer several advantages over traditional POD-based sandboxes, particularly in terms of flexibility, scalability, and operational efficiency.

When considering key aspects of sandbox implementation, on-demand sandboxes are usually the better choice.

Key Considerations	On-Demand Sandbox	POD-Based Sandbox
Flexibility and Scalability	Create and manage sandboxes dynamically, without relying on a specific POD. This flexibility helps allocate resources based on actual demand, reducing dependency on fixed infrastructure.	Rely on specific physical infrastructure (PODs), which limits flexibility and scalability and increases dependency on fixed infrastructure.
Resource Utilization	Optimize resource allocation across the Salesforce infrastructure by decoupling sandboxes from specific PODs. This results in better performance and reduced latency during development and testing activities.	Experience resource constraints tied to the specific POD, potentially leading to performance bottlenecks and increased latency.
Provisioning	Provision a sandbox faster compared to POD-based sandboxes, which accelerates the development lifecycle and lets teams focus on delivering value.	Provision more slowly due to dependency on specific physical infrastructure, which can delay the development lifecycle.
Reliability	Benefit from the Salesforce global infrastructure, making higher availability and reliability possible and reducing the risk of downtime or performance problems tied to a single POD.	Experience reliability impacts when problems occur specific to the POD, increasing the risk of downtime or performance issues.
Cost Efficiency	Experience cost savings by enabling organizations to pay for resources based on usage rather than maintaining fixed allocations tied to a POD.	Incur fixed costs associated with maintaining specific infrastructure regardless of actual usage.
Management	Simplify management with centralized administrative tasks, such as monitoring usage, managing access, and ensuring compliance with organizational policies.	Add complexity to sandbox management by requiring coordination with specific POD infrastructure.

Discover the Commerce for B2C On-Demand Sandbox Advantage

On-demand sandboxes help organizations with dynamic development needs, distributed teams, or developers who want to optimize their Commerce for B2C environment for agility and cost-effectiveness.

Here’s a list of the advantages that you get with ODS.

Self-service management: Manage sandboxes through self-service APIs or community-based command-line tools like SFCC-CI.
Configurable settings: Customize Open Commerce API (OCAPI) and Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) settings during sandbox creation.
Time-to-live option: Set sandboxes to delete automatically after a specified duration, reducing costs.
Usage-based pricing: Control costs with a pricing model that is based on credits consumed for sandbox uptime and downtime.
Quick provisioning: Experience faster development cycles with rapid sandbox creation and setup. The Commerce for B2C Developer Sandbox REST API and Commerce for B2C Control Center offer versatile provisioning and management options.
Scalability: Create multiple short-term sandboxes or maintain a few long-term ones based on project needs.
Improved performance: Experience sandboxes that are optimized for better performance compared to traditional options.

Best Practices for Commerce for B2C Sandboxes

These guidelines cover critical areas for managing your on-demand sandboxes effectively. Consistent use of these best practices maximizes performance, manages costs, and keeps your development environment clean, efficient, and aligned with your organizational goals.

Environment Usage

Use sandboxes for unit testing of code rather than data. Sandboxes aren’t production environments.
Use a minimal set of sites and a subset of products to avoid overloading the sandbox.

Data Management

Upload only essential data, such as products, customers, inventory, and prices, to minimize resource usage.
Delete outdated data, including old source code versions, to maintain performance.

Task and Job Management

Avoid running concurrent tasks or jobs in parallel to minimize performance issues.
Turn off unnecessary jobs, such as regular product index rebuilds when no products have changed.

Developer Access

Limit the use of a single sandbox to one developer to prevent conflicts.
Disconnect tools like UX Studio pipeline or script debugger when not in use.

Regional Considerations

Use a sandbox located near your region to reduce latency and avoid conflicts with automated system tasks.

Security and Maintenance

Turn on storefront password protection to prevent unwanted traffic.
Run a DBINIT and clear all static files after you complete a project.

CI and CD Alignment

While these best practices don’t directly address CI and CD pipelines, they provide a foundation for maintaining a clean and efficient sandbox environment. For CI and CD processes, follow these best practices.

Automate deployments to sandboxes and follow a structured pipeline.
Use version control systems to manage code changes and integrate them into the sandbox environment systematically.
Regularly refresh sandboxes to align with production data and configurations, ensuring consistency across environments.

Next Steps

In this unit, you explored how Commerce for B2C on-demand sandboxes differ from POD-based sandboxes, and you learned how you can improve your development processes with an ODS. You also discovered how to use ODS in your CI and CD processes. Next, learn about roles and permissions, the sandbox credit system, and the prerequisites for creating an ODS.

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