Our latest sandbox refresh is estimated to take 2 weeks😳 Comments from support make it sound like that is expected/typical. Has that been everyone's experience? And if so, do you have any tips on how you handle dev processes during those two weeks?

You should still be able to work in the sandbox while the refresh processes, then when it’s ready, you have to activate the refresh. Or is Netsuite saying the activation of the refresh will taker that long?

No, I know we can keep working. But then anything new that is worked on during that period will get stomped when its activated. Do you work in sandbox, deploy that new stuff to prod, then activate the refresh? And then I guess the stuff that you deployed after the snapshot just gets caught up in the next refresh?

So, yes, if you only have one full sandbox, that is a risk. Anything worked on in the interim could be deployed to prod, but won’t be in the sandbox. There are a few possible ways to avoid that. If your developers use SDF projects to deploy their changes, then they could easily redeploy their changes to the sandbox after the refresh as well. If you have a second full sandbox, or any developer accounts, you can deploy changes there right before activation, then deploy them back to the sandbox. Those are really the best two options to avoid releasing anything to production that isn’t fully tested and verified.

Got it, thank you for the tips!

I highly recommend the SDF project approach. I use it myself, and it is very nice to essentially have a local copy of your customizations that you can deploy anywhere. Even if you started off customizing in the UI, you can pull customizations into an SDF project later, so it’s never too late.

We are using SDF most of the time. That is a great idea as long as the deployment isn't too dependent on account specific data. But I suppose that challenge is there regardless of refresh timing. Either way, I'm glad to hear this two week issue seems like an anomaly