Upvotes for honest anecdata and asking for advice! > How do you simulate the data flowing through live in the test / dev enviornment. Most don't, rolling with

Upvotes for honest anecdata and asking for advice! > How do you simulate the data flowing through live in the test / dev enviornment. Most don't, rolling with the schema and 'minimum viable' data flow instead. Make darn sure your backups work by testing restores regularly. Restoring a production backup elsewhere may be an option if it's possible to avoid sensitive data (scrubbing afterward introduces risk of missing something, and should be scripted/repeatable). Exactly matching production data flow is not as important as avoiding accidentally hosing the prod db.