Microsoft purview enviornments i.e TEST & PROD?

Microsoft Purview only allows one account per Azure tenant, so you can’t create completely separate “Test” and “Production” environments like you might with other tools. Instead, using collections, you can set up separate areas inside the same Purview account. Think of collections like folders with their own access controls — you can create one for testing and another for production and give different people access to each. This way, your test and production setups stay separate, even though they live in the same place.

If your organization already has a Purview account set up by one department, and now another team wants to use it without sharing data or admin rights, you don’t need a second account. Just give the new team their own collection and assign them admin roles only within that space. They won’t see the other team’s data, and the original admins won’t have access to theirs. Everything stays secure and separate. Creating an entirely new tenant (which would allow a second Purview account) should only be done if you truly need rigid separation — like for legal or regulatory reasons — because it adds a lot of extra complexity.