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Overview

What is Sandbox Studio?

Sandbox Studio is a web-based solution that helps cloud administrators manage temporary AWS sandbox environments. It automates the enforcement of security policies, governance rules, budget controls, and account recycling settings — all through an easy-to-use web interface.

The solution allows organisations to give teams a safe space to experiment, learn, and prototype with AWS services in production-isolated AWS accounts that are cleaned and recycled after use.

Key Capabilities

Sandbox Studio automatically configures a sandbox Organizational Unit (OU) in AWS Organizations. This OU is preloaded with AWS best practices for workload isolation and governance. When deployed, it applies a standard set of policies, guardrails, and controls to all sandbox accounts.

The platform provides:

  • Automated cost controls

    • Sends alerts when spending approaches budget limits.

    • Can trigger automated actions (e.g., resource shutdowns) when limits are reached.

  • Account recycling

    • Allows accounts to be used for a fixed duration or until a spend threshold is met.

    • Cleans and resets accounts at the end of the sandbox period.

  • Security restrictions

    • Limits access to expensive or sensitive AWS actions within sandbox accounts.

Common Use Cases

Sandbox Studio supports a wide range of scenarios where teams need safe, temporary AWS environments. These environments can be pre-configured, budget-limited, and automatically cleaned up — making them ideal for experimentation, learning, and short-term projects. Below are some of the most common ways organisations use Sandbox Studio.

Development and Innovation Experiments

Typical users: Developers, product engineers
Create small-scale, temporary AWS setups to try out new services or features before committing to a production build. Teams can quickly explore possibilities, validate technical approaches, and demonstrate value without the overhead of a full deployment pipeline.

Train and Test GenAI Models

Typical users: Machine learning engineers, data scientists
Work with pre-configured environments to train and fine-tune generative AI models. Sandbox Studio makes it easy to run experiments with different training datasets, apply reinforcement learning techniques, and monitor outcomes in a safe, isolated space.

Test Environments

Typical users: QA/test engineers
Spin up a clean, disposable environment for thorough application testing. These sandboxes are ideal for verifying integrations, reproducing defects, running regression suites, and testing API updates — all without risking production stability.

Higher Education Training Labs

Typical users: Professors, lecturers, academic department heads
Set up classroom-ready AWS accounts for students to explore cloud computing hands-on. Instructors can control spending, reset environments between sessions, and ensure each student gets a fresh workspace for assignments or exams.

Research and Development (R&D)

Typical users: University researchers, enterprise R&D teams
Provide a controlled cloud platform for research teams to run experiments and gather data. These sandboxes make it possible to test hypotheses, simulate real-world conditions, and analyse results without long-term infrastructure commitments.

Employee Onboarding and Training

Typical users: Training leads, HR onboarding teams
Launch short-lived AWS environments to give new hires or existing staff practical experience with tools, workflows, or new technologies. Ideal for structured training sessions, internal workshops, or skills refreshers.

Hackathons

Typical users: Enterprise IT teams
Run organisation-hosted hackathons in AWS accounts you own and control. This enables participants to work on real challenges while keeping sensitive or proprietary data inside your security boundaries.

Demo Environments

Typical users: Engineers, solution architects
Set up temporary environments to showcase applications or solutions. These can be pre-loaded with sample data and configurations to deliver smooth, predictable demos to clients or stakeholders.

Software Vendor Trials

Typical users: Software vendors, sales engineers
Offer time-limited or budget-restricted AWS environments so customers can test your software. This ensures a consistent experience for every trial while keeping operational costs under control.

Who Should Use This Guide

This installation guide is designed for:

  • Solution architects

  • DevOps engineers

  • AWS account administrators

  • Cloud operations teams

It provides:

  • An architecture overview

  • Planning considerations before deployment

  • Step-by-step configuration instructions for launching Sandbox Studio in your AWS environment

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