Just wanted to write a quick post about the type of salesforce sandboxes and their differentiation. I wanted to have it in one place so that we can quickly compare it and use the one we need. This diagram is also useful from a certification standpoint and a quick glance should job your memory about the sandboxes..

Also here is a typical Sandbox structure used in project..

Types of Sandboxes

Developer sandbox

This is assigned to each devloper or independent teams working on a task

Usually a Team of or each developer with be assigned a sandbox for the release.. Before promoting it futhere there is a Merge box with it goes through and where all the code going for the particuar release is merged. and testing.

Developer Pro

This is just a developer Sandbox with a higher storage capacity and can be used for testing, especially for integration testing and User training

Partial Copy

This is used for testing and contains metadata like production and you can load data using sandbox templates. Great for User acceptance testing, integration testing and Training

Full Copy

It is a replica of the Production instance and contains all metatdata and data same as your production environment. Main use cases is for Staging and Performance testing. The refresh interval is 29 days.