Could you please let me know the how often and the best practice to clone from 'Prod' to 'Dev'?

[pattathk]

Could you please let me know the how often and the best practice to clone from 'Prod' to 'Dev'?

[Harry Campbell2]

I always clone from Prod to Dev before I start any new development work. I have a weekly release cycle so I do any development work for the week, release to Prod, then clone Prod over Dev.

I also clone prod over Dev & Test before any upgrade.

Not exactly an official best practice but it does ensure any Dev work I do will work in prod once released

[mrswann]

Upgrade is a bit different isn't it , definitely required as part of the upgrade!!

I use Dev to build fixes, Test for QA/UAT/Regression

So when an Upgrade is ready for production, I keep Test as-is due to test case evidence and Dev will be cloned from Prod before the upgrade so it can be used as a reference point... should the inevitable "It always worked before!" lines come out So nice to have the ability to validate perception!

Generally speaking - I think cloning should be regular and tied in to the development cycle

If you are not doing any dev work for a while, your instance is likely to fall out of sync - data wise - so a clone is never a bad thing so long as you know what activity is ongoing in the instance and appreciate the impact of cloning (overwriting update sets etc)

I would also aim to clone Test and Dev (if you have 2 sub prods) at similar times, being mindful of when your production backup executes - it is a shame you cannot schedule them to clone concurrently, even if they execute at different times.

[Chuck Tomasi]

Hi Kiren,

This is going to vary from organization to organization. It really depends how often you want to refresh the data in sub-prod instances. That's the big benefit of doing a clone. Some people do this once a year, some quarterly, some more often. It's based on your requirements, development/release cycle, and other variables I'm too tired to think of right now.

[Shahed Shah1]

I don't think that this is something where you can get a single true answer as this really ties down to your development methodology, frequency of development items (like something at the end of a Sprint) and how often you have projects to work on.

Whichever you choose or are advised by our experienced experts on the Community, it would be ideal to ensure you have a like-for-like setup between Dev and Production so that there are no "missing links" in the items being developed and you have "realistic" test data to verify the success of the outcome.

Therefore you would want to have frequent refreshes of the development instances, but not too frequent where this is a hindrance for your developers.