About IBM Cloud Sandbox

The Sandbox platform provides a secure, automated, and scalable environment that enables users to discover IBM Cloud offerings from the IBM Cloud Catalog. You can provision Sandbox environment, deploy workloads, and evaluate IBM Cloud VPC capabilities with minimal setup effort.

IBM Cloud Sandbox enables users to:

  • Familiarize with IBM Cloud VPC features, functions, and deployment workflows.

  • Select suitable VPC compute profiles and deploy test workloads.

  • Evaluate how VPC architecture supports their technical and business requirements.

  • Experience hands-on testing before migrating applications from Classic Virtual Server or Bare Metal Server.

  • Explore next-generation infrastructure without impacting existing environments or incurring additional cost.

  • Gain practical insights that enhance confidence and readiness for migration to IBM Cloud VPC.

Key features

Following are the key features:

  • Isolated environments - Every customer is assigned a separate sub-account, isolated from other users.

  • Time limited access - A 14‑day trial with automatic cleanup of provisioned resources.

  • Trusted profile security - Fine-grained access control through IBM Cloud IAM.

  • Collaborative access - Ability to invite team members to the sandbox environment.

Architecture diagram

Architecture diagram
IBM Cloud Sandbox architecture diagram

How it works

The IBM Cloud Sandbox architecture consists of few primary layers that work together to provide a secure and isolated trial environment:

  1. Users - Users access the Cloud Sandbox through the IBM Cloud Console. After authentication, users can create the sandbox environment, which triggers the provisioning workflow.

  2. Customer account - The customer account serves as the entry point for Sandbox provisioning and management. This layer includes:

    • IBM Cloud catalog - The IBM Cloud catalog provides the Cloud Sandbox service offering, allowing users to discover and create the Sandbox environment directly from the catalog interface.

    • Cloud Console - The Cloud Console provides the user interface for creating and managing Sandbox environments.

  3. Sandbox Sub Account - The Sandbox Sub Account is the central infrastructure that hosts all customer Sandbox environments. Each customer receives a dedicated sub-account with a trusted profile that provides isolated access to Sandbox resources. This sub-account has a 14-day trial period and includes:

  • Sandbox Overview page - Under the Overview page, you can create the resources for Sandbox by clicking Create Resources.

  • Servers - You can provision the virtual server instances (VSIs) or Bare Metal servers for testing workloads.

  • Additional services - These are additional services that are automatically provisioned with default configurations when you create your Sandbox. They enhance your environments capabilities and are ready to use immediately without additional setup.

    • IBM Cloud Object Storage - A highly scalable and durable storage solution designed for unstructured data.

    • Load Balancer - An intelligent traffic distribution service that improves application availability and performance.

    • VPN for VPC - A secure Virtual Private Network solution that provides encrypted connectivity to your Virtual Private Cloud environment.

    • Transit Gateway - A centralized network hub that simplifies connectivity between different network environments.

The trusted profile ensures that customers have appropriate access controls and can only interact with resources within their allocated Sandbox environment. All resources are automatically cleaned up after the 14-day trial period expires.