Hi, Readers.
Today, I’d like to discuss a question I’ve been asked recently: what are the main differences between a Business Central production environment and a sandbox environment?
You can create environments of different types. Which type of environment to choose depends on what you need it for.
Production environments: Production environments are meant to be precisely that: Environments that a business can run their daily business in Business Central in.
Sandbox environments: Sandbox environments are meant to be precisely that: Environments that you can play around with, use as a testbed for development, and delete at will.
Let’s take a look at their key differences
Performance Differences
Production environments are deployed on dedicated performance tiers in Azure, ensuring a high level of availability and prioritized support. So if you want to run performance tests, or similar benchmarking, the sandbox isn’t reliable enough for that purpose. The reason is that sandboxes run in a different performance tier on Azure than production environments. Instead, create a dedicated environment based on the Production environment type to get the same experience and performance that users experience in the actual production environment. For more information, see Performance in Business Central online
PS: This is mentioned in the following Microsoft Learn article. More details: Production and sandbox environments
Extension Deployment Limitations (VS Code)
Sandbox environments are handy for certain types of development scenarios because the debugging endpoint is open by default. This means that you can attach Visual Studio Code to a running system and debug through running code. It also allows you to publish directly to the environment from Code.
So you can deploy apps straight from Visual Studio Code to a sandbox environment, and you can attach a debugging session to a sandbox. However, this is not possible in a production environment, which means you can use the Sandbox environment for development, but not the production environment.
PS: The scope of extensions (Global, PTE, Dev)
Note
Apps that are published to a sandbox from the development environment or created using Designer are published within the scope of the service node that hosts the environment. When the sandbox is upgraded, these apps are removed because the environment is moved to another node that is running the new version. However, the data of the app isn’t removed, so you only have to republish and install the app to make it available.
Apps that are uploaded to the environments of both types (production and sandbox) using the Upload Extension action from the Extension Management page are published within a global scope. When the environment is upgraded or moved, these apps are downloaded to the service node and installed, which means that they don’t disappear.
Additionally, you can debug the production environment from VS Code, but this is limited to Snapshot Debugging. More details: Snapshot Debugging (Debugging in Cloud Production)
Preview Version Support
New functionality can be previewed in preview environments. Sandbox environments can be created on or updated to preview versions during preview periods to preview and test upcoming functionality ahead of its official availability. For more information, see Preview environments.
PS:
1. Business Central 2025 wave 2 (BC27): Update sandbox environments to preview versions
Sandbox-only features
Microsoft occasionally introduces new capabilities as Sandbox-only features before making them available in Production environments. This allows customers and partners to evaluate new functionality in a safe environment without upgrading to a preview version. Once validated, these features may later become available in Production. For example, Designing and coding agents (preview)
Included Environments
The Premium and Essential subscription types give each Business Central customer one production environment and three sandbox environments free of extra charge.
If the customer requires more production environments, they can buy additional environments through their CSP partner. Each additional production environment comes with three additional sandbox environments and 4 GB additional, tenant-wide database capacity.
Backup and Restore Capabilities
Both Production and Sandbox environments are automatically backed up by Microsoft using Azure SQL Database automated backups and support point-in-time restore for up to 28 days. The key difference lies in the restore target: a Production environment can be restored to either a Production or Sandbox environment, whereas a Sandbox environment can only be restored to a Sandbox environment.
| Source | Restore Target |
|---|---|
| Production | Production ✅ / Sandbox ✅ |
| Sandbox | Sandbox ✅ |
| Sandbox | Production ❌ |
Production:
Sandbox:
More details: Restoring an environment in the admin center
Partner Sandbox
In principle, this is not a matter of Production versus Sandbox; rather, it is a specific type of Sandbox that cannot be used for Production.
As a partner, you can buy the Dynamics 365 Business Central Partner Sandbox license. You need a valid Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) ID. This offer was made available to support partners that need nonproduction environments to learn, test, develop, and deliver end-to-end customer demos with their solutions. The Partner Sandbox license has to be purchased for at least five users per tenant, gives access to Business Central Premium functionality, and acts as a normal Premium license that your customers might acquire. More details: New Partner Sandbox Environments and Get early access preview versions as a partner – Early Access Preview (Next Major) environment in Cloud/SaaS
Others
Finally, I would like to briefly cover the features shared by both Production and Sandbox environments.
1. Exporting databases in the admin center
Previously, only the Production environment supported this export feature; however, starting with the 2025 release wave 2, it is now also supported in Sandbox environments. More details: Export sandbox environment databases
2. Database and backups
Many people believe that the backup strategies for Production and Sandbox environments differ, but in reality, they are identical. Azure SQL Database protects Business Central production and sandbox environments by taking automatic backups that it keeps for 28 days. More details: Database and backups
3. Transfer environments
Environments can be transferred between Microsoft Entra tenants, and this applies to both Production and Sandbox environments. More details: Business Central 2023 wave 2 (BC23.4): Transfer environments between Microsoft Entra tenants (formerly Azure Active Directory tenant) and Considerations
PS: How to determine whether the current environment is Sandbox or Production
END
Hope this will help.
Thanks for reading.
ZHU
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