Salesforce B2C Commerce 24.7 > Get Started

Instances

A B2C Commerce instance contains the tools and resources for customizing storefronts. You can access an instance through your browser, or you can use Business Manager.

Instance Types

There are four instance types: Sandbox, Staging, Development, and Production. Depending on the type, the instance is either in the realm's primary instance group (PIG) or a secondary instance group (SIG).

‌	Sandboxes	Staging	Development	Production
Usage	Used by customer developers to create and update storefront code. Note: Sandboxes without login activity for 150 days might be deleted. We will notify you before a sandbox and its data are scheduled to be deleted.	Merchandising work is done here.	Simulates the production environment. Used as the final step in testing the intersection of content and code. Goes through the CDN provided by B2C Commerce, but doesn't cache.	Live instance used for storefront transactions. Connected to the CDN provided by B2C Commerce. If active merchandising is enabled, collects active data. Storefront toolkit is disabled.
Location	SIG	PIG	PIG	PIG
Data I/O	Most system jobs are disabled for sandboxes.	Data and code are uploaded to Staging and then replicated to Production or Development.	Data and code are replicated from Staging. Data can be exported from the instance.	Data and code are replicated from Staging. Active data is gathered from Production and imported into other instance types. Data can be exported from the instance and imported into Staging.
Global Release	Updated for: Preview General Availability	Updated for: General Availability	Updated for: General Availability	Updated for: General Availability
Caching	Caching is disabled. Full file system checks are performed.	Not connected to the CDN provided by B2C Commerce. Caching is disabled. Full file system checks are performed.	Caching is disabled. No file system checks are performed.	Caching is enabled all the way through to the browser.

Who Uses Which Instance Type?

Depending on the size of your team, one person can play more than one role.

Role	Instance Type	Responsibilities
Developer	Sandbox, Staging	A developer creates or modifies templates, pipelines, and scripts on a local machine and uploads them to a Sandbox instance to test. Ultimately, the developer is responsible for uploading code to the Staging instance. The developer can also export data added by merchandisers on the Staging instance to use as test data for the sandboxes. Note: Developers never use the Development instance unless they are involved in the testing process for the production site.
Merchandiser	Staging	A merchandiser or online marketer is typically responsible for creating campaigns and promotions, managing product information, and configuring search behavior.
Administrator	All instances	An admin is responsible for granting access to instances and functionality on instances. The admin restarts instances, manages data feeds, and uploads certificates.
Quality Assurance Engineer	Development	This role is responsible for testing the site in conditions as close to production as possible. No code development is done on the Development instance.