Zuora Testing Environments

API Sandbox

The API Sandbox is Zuora's "release preview" environment. It is a customer facing, multi-tenant environment that gets code deployed to it before Zuora's production environment. How early code gets deployed depends on the type of release: Major releases are usually deployed a week in advance, whereas minor releases and emergency patches get deployed days, hours or minutes before production. Zuora customers can purchase any number of tenants in this environment for a recurring annual fee.

API Sandbox is co-located in the same data center as the production environment, running on bare metal, but on a smaller footprint, offering less capacity.

The main use cases for API Sandbox include:

• Integration testing
• Regression testing
• Release preview testing

This environment is located at:

• For the US Data Center customers: https://apisandbox.zuora.com
• For the EU Data Center customers: https://sandbox.eu.zuora.com

Performance Test Environment

The Performance Test Environment is Zuora's de-facto Performance Test environment. It's the multi-tenant environment which we recommend customers and partners to use for extensive performance testing and trying to test the integration with Zuora or identify bottlenecks with an integration. Zuora customers can purchase any number of tenants in this environment, paying for them on a monthly basis.

Code releases are deployed to Performance Test Environment shortly after they are deployed to the production environment, typically a few minutes after production deployment, keeping the Performance Test environment in close parity with production.

The environment is co-located with our Disaster Recovery infrastructure in our secondary data center, running on bare metal as well.

The main use cases for the Performance Test Environment include:

• Performance load testing
• End to end timing testing (especially for data migrations)

This environment is located at https://pt1.zuora.com

For information about which features are supported in the Performance Test Environment, see "Support for Zuora Features, Add-ons, Integrations", below.

Production Copy Environment

The Production Copy Environment is an isolated customer sandbox, containing a scrubbed snapshot of customer data from Zuora's production environment, running completely on AWS on a significantly smaller capacity/footprint Zuora stack with the same release version as production. These environments are also referred to as "Service Environments". This is the only environment which supports scrubbed data and configuration copy from production.

Zuora customers can purchase any number of Production Copy Environments and one Enhanced Production Copy environment, paying for each on an annual basis.

The Production Copy Environment has some unique characteristics:

• The Production Copy Environment are run on a best-effort basis, and do not have a guaranteed up-time or performance.

• Customers are responsible for managing the schedule of refreshes of their environments. This includes coordinating the refresh to include a new Zuora version and data snapshot. Without careful management, service environments may lag in code and data version when compared to customer's production tenant. See Refresh Policy for more information.

  Enhanced Production Copy Environment is updated along with Production. Such updates typically involve code changes only and do not refresh existing customer data.

  The Enhanced Production Copy Environment feature is in Limited Availability and is limited to one Enhanced Production Copy environment per production tenant. Contact Zuora Global Support for details.

• Provisioning or refreshing to a Production Copy Environment typically takes 5 business days, but the process may take longer. For instance, provisioning a Production Copy Environment may take longer than 5 business days if a large volume of data needs to be extracted from the production environment and scrubbed.

• Various sensitive parts of production-copied data (such as API keys, credit card numbers, email addresses, and so on) are scrubbed as part of the environment provisioning process. This typically means customers need to perform some level of data grooming after an environment is provisioned or refreshed, prior to using.  See Scrubbed Data for more details on what records are scrubbed.

• Some Zuora security features, such as SSO and MFA, and security compliance levels, such as PCI and SOC, are not supported in Production Copy Environment.

• Production Copy environments currently do not include the following features:

  • Reporting
  • Insights
  • RevPro
  • Marketplace (formerly known as Zuora Connect)
  • Collect
  • Micro-service based features, such as Notifications on Any Event, and Orders UI

  Existing customers can request at most one Enhanced Production Copy environment that includes additional features and products, such as Reporting, RevPro Integration, Workflow, and other Marketplace applications.

  The Enhanced Production Copy Environment feature is in Limited Availability and is limited to one Enhanced Production Copy environment per production tenant. Contact Zuora Global Support for details.

• Enhanced Production Copy environments support the following features that a basic Production Copy Environment does not support:

  • Reporting

  • OAuth authentication via REST API

  • Copying multiple entities

  • Data Model

  • Settings API

  • Data Query

  • Event Triggers and Notifications

  • Workflow, Collect, and Marketplace

• Currently, Enhanced Production Copy environments have the following limitations:

  • Customers are limited to only 1 enhanced production copy per production tenant.

  • Enhanced Production Copy environments only copy core billing data from production environments.  Data copy for new features, such as Data Model, is not yet supported.

  • Only US data center is supported.

For more information, see Support for Zuora Features, Add-ons, Integrations.

The use cases for Production Copy environments include:

• Regression testing

• System testing

• Data modeling

Large Production Copy Environments are available, with the following benefits:

• More redundancy at the application and message routing layer
• Read-only database that runs on SSD to offload export operations
• More granular batch processing for improved performance on Callouts, Export ZOQL, PDF Generation, and Manual and Scheduled SFDC Sync.

Since these environments are provisioned on an as-needed basis, the URL endpoints for the REST API may vary. Once your environment is provisioned, check with Zuora Global Support which REST API endpoint you should used.

General Information

	API Sandbox	Production Copy Environment	Performance Test Environment
Does this sound like you?	I just want to test soon-to-be released features. I want to perform data migration  functional testing for a small customer base.	I want to test features in an isolated environment using my own data. I want to perform small scale data migration functional testing to validate functionality.	I want to perform bill runs timing load tests for an expected increase in volume. I want to perform data migration timing tests.
Suitable for	Previewing and functional testing new Zuora features before they are released to Production.	Functional testing with cloned configuration and data.	Heavy-load performance and stress testing.
Not Suitable for	Performance and load testing	Performance and load testing	Functional testing
Data Migration Testing	Yes Suitable for less than 100,000 records	Yes Suitable for a few thousand records	Yes Suitable for more than 100,000 records
	An example of 100,000 records would be 50,000 accounts + 50,000 subscriptions.
Infrastructure Mimics Production	No	No	Yes
Includes Environment Monitoring	Yes	No	No See Support Responsibilities for the Performance Test Environment at the end of this article for more information.
Rollback Policy	Rollbacks are not supported on any environment. Zuora recommends that you revert changes yourself – if possible. Reverting changes are possible before posting transactions on a bill run.
Hardware	Bare metal (non-virtualized) environment. Does not have 1-to-1 relationship with the production environment. Configuration varies and is based on the number of servers and the specification of each server.	Virtualized	Bare metal (non-virtualized) environment. Has a 1-to-1 relationship with the production environment.
Location	apisandbox.zuora.com	servicesn.zuora.com where n is a number allocated during provisioning	PT1.zuora.com
Supported API Authentication Schemes	OAuth 2.0 (recommended), username and password, authorization cookie, single-use tokens for CORS-enabled operations	Username and password, authorization cookie, single-use tokens for CORS-enabled operations	OAuth 2.0 (recommended), username and password, authorization cookie, single-use tokens for CORS-enabled operations

Refresh Policy

Zuora performs two types of refreshes: A refresh for a new Zuora version and a data snapshot refresh.

	API Sandbox	Production Copy Environment	Performance Test Environment
Refreshed with New Zuora Version	Yes Automatically refreshed approximately one week before the production release. Production releases are deployed on a weekly basis unless the scheduled date is close to the month-end. API Sandbox is also automatically refreshed for maintenance releases.	Production Copy Environment refreshes are on-demand and do not follow the production release schedule. Refresh limited to once monthly. Enhanced Production Copy Environment refreshes follow the production release schedule. Note: If you request a refresh for a new Zuora version, a data refresh will also occur.	Yes Automatically refreshed. Refreshes follow the production release schedule. Maintenance releases also occur in this environment, following the same production release schedule.
Data Snapshot Refresh (Includes Scrubbed Data Copied from Production)	No You are responsible for loading your data, including creating user logins and global tenant settings.	On-demand. Refresh limited to once monthly. Scrubbed data includes user logins, emails and global settings.	No You are responsible for loading your own data, including user logins and global tenant settings.
Historical PDF-generated Invoices	No You must generate PDF invoices from scratch.	No You must regenerate any previously generated PDF invoices in this environment	No You must generate PDF invoices from scratch.

Scrubbed Data

Zuora scrubs or cleans data that is copied to the Production Copy Environment to remove sensitive information. The following table provides a summary of the data that is scrubbed.

	API Sandbox	Production Copy Environment	Performance Test Environment
Personal Settings	N/A	User’s work email address. Note: Email addresses are replaced with benign information or dummy data.	N/A
Commerce
Zuora for Salesforce - 360 Sync	N/A	Salesforce Credentials	N/A
Billing & Payments
Customer Account	N/A	Bill To and Sold To Contact information: Work and Personal Email Work, Mobile, Home and Other phone numbers, and Address fields Default Payment Method plus any Electronic Payment Methods	N/A
Payment Gateways	N/A	Payment Gateway credentials	N/A
Avalara Integration	N/A	Avalara credentials	N/A
Payment Pages (HPM 2.0)	N/A	RSA Public Key, RSA Private Key	N/A
Hosted Payment Method Pages (HPM 1.0)	N/A	API Security Key	N/A
Notifications and Callouts	N/A	Callout Base URL	N/A
Finance
NetSuite	N/A	NetSuite integration credentials	N/A

Support for Zuora Features, Add-ons, Integrations

Zuora features, add-ons, and integrations are generally supported except where noted in the following table:

	API Sandbox	Production Copy Environment	Performance Test Environment
Notifications	Yes	Yes Contact Global Support if you want to disable email notifications. Notifications related to new users, password resets, and email address changes are always enabled and cannot be disabled.	Yes
Callouts	Yes	Yes	Yes
Single Sign-on	Yes	No	Yes
Two-factor Authentication	Yes	No	Yes
Reporting	Yes	No	Yes
New Invoice File Generation Service	Yes	Yes Submit a request at Zuora Global Support to enable this feature or service.	Yes
New Quote File Generation Service	Yes	Yes	Yes
Orders UI, including creating Orders through the UI	Yes	No	No
Add-ons and Integrations
Zuora for Salesforce	Yes	Yes	Yes
	Zuora requires a 1-to-1 relationship with Salesforce for each Zuora environment.
Real-time Sync	Yes	Yes	Yes
Data Connect (Configurable Sync)	Yes	No	No
Z-Suite	Yes	Yes Submit a request at Zuora Global Support to enable this feature or service.	Yes You must submit a request at Zuora Global Support to setup and enable.
Avalara Connector	Yes	Yes Submit a request at Zuora Global Support to enable this feature or service.	Yes You must submit a request at Zuora Global Support to set up and enable the Avalara Connector.
Payment Gateways	Yes Includes any gateway that is supported in production	Yes Includes only test gateways You cannot use production data to simulate payment runs or update payment methods in the Production Copy Environment.  Do the following to simulate a payment run in this environment: Set up a new gateway and set up new payment methods. Set a new default payment method in customer accounts. Create a simulated payment run.	Yes Includes any gateway that is supported in production
Insights	No	No	No
Collect	Yes	No	No

Limits Policy

	API Sandbox	Production Copy Environment	Performance Test Environment
Concurrent Request Limits	Bounded by Policy	Not Bounded by Policy	Bounded by Policy

 

If Customer’s use of the Service exceeds the usage limits in the applicable contracts or as described in this Knowledge Center article for any products provided, Customer must either purchase additional usage, if applicable, or move to the next edition of the Service. If Customer does not choose either of the options, Customer shall be considered out of compliance with such Service.

Security

	API Sandbox	Production Copy Environment	Performance Test Environment
PCI-compliant	Yes	No Customers accept compliance risks	Yes
Akamai Web Application Firewall and Acceleration Services	Yes for the US Data Center tenants	No	No
SOC 1 and SOC 2-compliant	Yes	No	Yes
HIPAA-compliant	Yes	No	Yes
IP Whitelist	Yes	Yes	Yes
Two-factor Authentication	Yes	No	Yes

Provisioning Environments

	API Sandbox	Production Copy Environment	Performance Test Environment
Provisioning Turnaround	None Immediate with logins	Yes 7-10 days	Yes 7-10 days
Order Form or SOW Required	Yes	Yes	Yes
Included with Platform Fee?	Yes Number of instances depends on Zuora Edition	No Purchase as an add-on	No Purchase as an add-on

To provision a Production Copy Environment or a Performance Test Environment, contact your Zuora representative. If you do not have a Zuora representative, submit a request at Zuora Global Support instead.

Please provide the following information:

• The type of testing environment that you would like to provision.
• In the case of a Production Copy Environment, the tenant ID of the production tenant that you would like Zuora to copy data from. See Managing Your Tenant Profile for how to find out the tenant ID.
• A name for the testing environment. This name will be displayed in the testing environment's banner.
• The email address of the person in your organization who will be the testing environment's administrator.

Your Zuora representative will send you an Order Form or an SOW for you to sign. After you have signed and returned the Order Form or SOW, Zuora will provision the testing environment.

The tenant activation email for the testing environment will be sent to the email address that you provided.