Sandbox trial loads before the production migration
Key Takeaway
For a production-like trial load, use a Full sandbox and refresh it after production changes. Only Full sandboxes support load testing, and production changes don't appear in a sandbox until you refresh it.
A trial load is a practice run of a data migration in a sandbox before the real load into production, for example when an Agentforce Manufacturing project moves legacy data into Salesforce. Sandboxes are isolated from your production org, so operations you perform in a sandbox don't affect production. You can rehearse a data load there without risk to production data. How much the trial run can prove depends on the sandbox type you pick and how closely the sandbox matches production.
Choose the sandbox type
Test data that doesn't reflect production volumes, relationships, and edge cases misses issues that later appear in production, so a realistic trial environment matters before the production migration. Sandbox types differ mainly in how much production data they hold.
| Sandbox type | What it copies from production | Performance testing, load testing, and staging |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Configuration (metadata) only | Not supported |
| Developer Pro | Configuration (metadata) only | Not supported |
| Partial Copy | Metadata plus a representative sample of production data, for example 10,000 records per object | Not supported |
| Full | A replica of production, including all data (such as object records and attachments) and metadata | Supported |
Developer Pro can host larger data sets than Developer. Like Developer, though, it copies only metadata, so neither one comes with production records. Salesforce recommends Full sandboxes for data migration validation and production-like staging.
If the trial load must match incoming records against records that already exist in production...
Rule out Developer and Developer Pro sandboxes, because they come with no production records to match against. A Partial Copy sandbox holds only a sample, so records the load needs might be missing. A Full sandbox holds all production data.
If the trial load must also be load tested...
Use a Full sandbox, because only Full sandboxes support load testing.
If you need quality assurance work such as user acceptance testing, integration testing, or training...
A Partial Copy sandbox is meant for that work.
Priya's team is moving 15 years of customer and order history from a legacy ERP system into Salesforce. Early on, they load a few hundred made-up records into a Developer Pro sandbox to check that each column in the load file lands in the right field. The run proves the mapping but little else, because the sandbox came with no production records. For the final rehearsal, they switch to a Full sandbox. There they load the complete history at production volume and measure how long the load takes.