User licences on Sandbox

Question

I've not had a chance to look around a production org yet, hence these questions.

1. Every time a new sandbox is created, are we buying a new set of licences? I understand from this answer that its a percentage of the production cost. What exactly is the math here?

2. Do all users in production (active and inactive) get created in the sandbox? This answer says it doesn't give me a cost benefit. But is it possible?

3. What happens when I delete a sandbox?

My questions are from the billing and licence usage perspective rather than an administrative or functional one.

How does it work?

Answer 1

The DeveloperForce Wiki provides a good explanation on the differences in the sandbox licences. It has a table which includes information on how many sandboxes and which types are provided with your licences.

http://wiki.developerforce.com/page/An_Introduction_to_Environments

Also worth a look is the licence types as some include sandboxes for free.

http://www.sfdcstatic.com/au/assets/pdf/datasheets/DS_SalesCloud_EdCompare.pdf

To give a brief summary for your questions.

1. This depends on the type of sandbox that you create, developer sandboxes for instance are free but include very little storage space for testing. In short the answer is probably no as you do not pay extra for the licences within the sandbox per-se, but depending on the types of licences you purchase originally (enterprise & above include some sandboxes) and the type of sandbox that you purchase (full or configuration sandbox) you may pay between 15-20% of your total licence costs, from what I understand (I am not in the sales area) this is something that can typically be negotiated depending on the length of time required, the number of licences and other factors and not specifically listed in any official salesforce.com documentation.

2. Yes generally when you cut a sandbox the users are also copied to the sandbox environment with the name of the sandbox appended to the end of their username and email.

3. If you delete a sandbox, you delete a sandbox. Any data or code that is not in production will be permanently deleted. The only other thing that really happens of note is if you delete a full sandbox you have to wait 29 days before being able to cut a new one. More information on the management of sandboxes is available here.

https://help.salesforce.com/HTViewHelpDoc?id=data_sandbox_manage.htm&language=en_US

Hope this answers your questions.

Answer 2

When you create a new sandbox you are not purchasing any additional licenses. However, the number of types of sandboxes you have available will depend on the edition you've purchased. The link @Mitch provided has a list of the various types of sandboxes and how many you get with each edition.

When a sandbox is created, all users, inactive and active will be present in the sandbox. Active users will all be able to login to the sandbox provided they know the sandbox name and how to login to a sandbox.

When you delete a sandbox any data or config changes you made in that sandbox will disappear. However, config changes that have been packaged in a change set and uploaded to an alternative org will continue to be available.

In summary, you don't need to worry about the number of licenses or billing for sandbox, but should make sure that the edition of licenses you are purchasing meet your sandbox needs.