Experimentation Sandbox

The Experimentation Sandbox is a development and testing environment for new applications, services, and technologies. It provides a secure and non-production environment with basic cloud services, limited resources, and usage-based billing.

Features

• Non-production environment for experimentation and learning
• Access to basic cloud services such as compute, storage, and network
• Limited resources and capabilities to keep experimentation costs low
• Usage-based billing to control costs

Benefits

• Enables testing and development of new applications, services, and technologies
• Provides a secure and safe environment for experimentation
• Reduces the risk of production outages and impacts
• Helps ensure compliance with regulations and standards

Use Cases / Playbooks

• Develop and test new data analysis algorithms
• Test new application code or infrastructure configurations
• Prototype new web applications or mobile apps
• Experiment with new security models or access controls

Success Stories

• A research team used the Innovation Sandbox to develop a data collection and retrieval application to automate and standardize the data intake for the yearly Health of Canadians report
  • https://github.com/PHACDataHub/cpho-phase2

Getting Started

To get stated with the Innovation Sandbox, please contact the Public Health Data Center of Practice for access and usage guidelines.

Limitations

• Not intended for production workloads
• Only unclassified data may be used
• No backup or recovery services are available
• Users are responsible for monitoring and managing their own resources
• Users may be removed or services stopped at any time
• No guarantee of availability or reliability
• Limited support and documentation
• No connections to legacy datacenters aka "ground"
• Restricted to North American resources

Service Capacity

🪫 (Low)

This service is currently being implemented using manual process. As these processes become automated the capacity in this service offering will increase. Please contact group for current availability.

Service Timelines

Currently available in a limited capacity.