Delphix

August 9th, 2013

For more information see: http://delphix.com

The following is a series of posts on Delphix technology:

Also see

Delphix is the most powerful product to improve development output and quality in the 20+ years I’ve been working with databases. It improves development by eliminating the enormous infrastructure, bureaucracy and time drag that it takes to provision databases for development environments. Development environments depend on having a copies of production databases and Delphix allows provisioning in a few minutes with almost no storage overhead by sharing duplicate blocks among all the copies.
If you could create as many copies as you wanted of production databases for development, reporting and QA, how many would you create? 10,20, a 100? It is easily possible in the space of a single copy of the production database  by sharing the  common blocks between all the copies.  Sharing the common blocks is called thin  cloning. Thin  cloning give enormous disk savings by sharing the majority of source database data blocks. Thin  cloning has been around for over 15 years but due  constraints such as scripting,  specialized hardware and specialized administrators saw little adoption of thin  cloning. Thin  cloning ultimately lead to database virtualization which breaks down all the barriers  providing an automated, simple, fast and hardware agnostic software stack. Adoption has finally exploded with the  database virtualization. Virtual databases can be created, refreshed, rolled back, rolled forward and deleted in minutes. Virtual databases can be provisioned from any second within the source databases retention window which is typically several weeks. Every developer can have their own full copy of production databases, production databases can have 50 days of backup live online in the space of one backup. Backups can be brought online in minutes, data reviewed or extract and the copy removed in seconds. QA teams can go from one test environment to instead having multiple full copies of production database allowing running QA tests in parallel. The software is easy enough to be administered by a junior DBA and the interface is so simple that developers can do self service provisioning and refreshes of databases.

 

I’m not sure if you can imagine the ease and savings of virtualizing databases. Database Virtualization gives:

 

  1. Project acceleration  as developers can get copies in minutes
  2. Project parallelization as each developer can have their own copy
  3. Project stability as errors can be caught using full copies instead of subsets
  4. Production protection with recovery from logical corruptions in minutes
  5. Storage savings
Delphix is software. Delphix installs on any x86 box, supports any Oracle OS (as well as SQL Server) and uses any storage.  The source database is copied onto the Delphix machine with RMAN APIs, the data is compressed and Delphix handles capturing new changes on the source database and provisioning of virtual databases. Virtual database can be provisioned from the original source  at any second  or any SCN  during the source retention window which is typically 2 weeks. Then you can make as many copies as you want  for almost free.

 


Delphix technology adoption is exploding and rapidly being harnessed  by leading companies across  industries. Delphix  has been implemented at Deutch Bank (banking), Ebay (online consumer) , Tivo (consumer tech), Staples (retail),   Macys (clothing), Facebook (social networking), Informatica (enterprise software),  Comcast (telcom), KLA Tencor (hardware),  Krogers (grocers ), Holland America (travel), New York Life (insurance), Molina (Health care) .

Delphix makes all of this easy with no changes on production and  the creation of virtual database is just a few clicks of a mouse in GUI .
For more information see:  http://www.delphix.com

 

Articles
  • Forbes: Delphix Shrinks Database Complexity 100-Fold
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2012/03/13/delphix-shrinks-database-complexity-100-fold/
  • WSJ: “Jed is a phenomenal CEO, … He has great technology and he’s assembling a great team.” http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2012/07/24/delphix-wants-to-virtualize-your-databases/ 
  • Delphix – How virtual databases can close data centers http://www.zdnet.com/delphix-how-virtual-databases-can-close-data-centers-7000008702/
  • Innovation bottleneck: The database
    http://blogs.techworld.com/industry-insight/2012/12/innovation-bottleneck-the-database/index.htm
  • Governments continue to invest in cloud technology http://govpro.com/technology/hardware_software/Delphix-20121128/
  • Delphix and Carahsoft Partner to Accelerate Government Procurement of Database Virtualization Solution http://www.prweb.com/releases/DelphixCarahsoftGSA/8_2012/prweb9800462.htm 
  • 4 smokin’ hot startups: The next tech boom http://www.infoworld.com/d/the-industry-standard/4-smokin-hot-startups-the-next-tech-boom-209026
  • Delphix Secures Strategic Partnership and Technology Development Agreement From IQT to Support U.S. Intelligence Community http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/delphix-secures-strategic-partnership-technology-development-agreement-from-iqt-support-1736003.htm
  • Jedidiah Yueh: Founder and CEO, Delphix
    http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/print-edition/2012/12/07/jedidiah-yueh-founder-and-ceo-delphix.html
  • Delphix Selected as Winner of 2012 Top 100 Global Red Herring
    http://www.bloomberg.com/article/2012-12-05/aEusZ5F69XnE.html
  • “Delphix, simply put is a database virtualization tool. “http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/dba/what-is-delphix-for-sql-server/ 
  • Delphix customer use cases with SQL Server http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/dba/use-cases-for-delphix/
  • Delphix partnership slashes time, cost of database management http://dlvr.it/2JDbCT
  • Pella opens window of opportunity with database virtualization software http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/feature/Pella-opens-window-of-opportunity-with-database-virtualization-software 

Relate blog posts

  1. Trackbacks

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  3. February 7th, 2013: Delphix « Oracle Scratchpad
  4. April 12th, 2013: Quora
  1. Comments

  2. siyaM
    October 31st, 2011 at 00:29 | #1

    i would like to see more of integration with other databases, like SAP SQL and others.

  3. October 31st, 2011 at 00:32 | #2

    SQL Server is being developed now and Sybase and DB2 are scheduled to follow.
    SAP runs on Oracle as well as Sybase so support for the SAP installations on Oracle is already there.

  4. CaseyC
    May 25th, 2012 at 17:34 | #3

    Can data in the vDB be masked automatically masked at creation? I’m assuming the answer is ‘yes’, since it is baked into RMAN, but the answer is important to environments where HIPAA and PCI/PII data are used in the production DB.

  5. December 19th, 2012 at 00:08 | #4

    Update: SQL Server support is out since June 2012.
    Masking can be done by any number of 3rd part products.

  6. arik lev
    March 14th, 2013 at 11:23 | #5

    Hi Kyle

    How do you see SAP LVM with EMC integration vs Delphix

  7. Rick
    March 15th, 2013 at 20:47 | #6

    Hi Arik,

    LVM is SAP’s tool for fast copying an SAP system. One of the first steps is to clone the data(base) of the system – later it automates BDLS and the other post-copy steps required to rename all the various objects in the new copied system. Anyway, LVM doesn’t do the cloning itself, it calls out to some other product to do this, such as EMC (as you indicate). Delphix can be considered another of these. However, there are some key benefits to Delphix vs the storage products. You already know about Delphix’s ability to refresh or rollback the cloned data, on demand. Storage snapshots don’t let SAP developers do this. However, a less obvious difference is that an SAP production landscape and its copied development landscape are often on two different storage types. Maybe HItachi or EMC or something for production, and then cheaper storage in non-prod. In many cases, the customer is migrating to vBlock, so prod is on old storage and non-prod is on vBlock. EMC (or NetApp) *can’t* clone from one to another, so would be unusable in this case with LVM. Of course, Delphix can create virtual copies where the source is on one type of storage and the target is a different type.

    We are working on a short paper with SAP on this topic (Delphix + LVM) right now. Please email me directly if you want to discuss further.

    Thanks,
    Rick

  8. arik lev
    March 17th, 2013 at 07:32 | #7

    Hi Rick
    Thanks for the clarification
    Arik

  9. Vikram Rathour
    March 18th, 2013 at 15:16 | #8

    Hi,

    Is there a way to test / evaluate the Delphix product?
    Cannot see a trial download on the Delphix website.

    Regards,
    Vikram Rathour

  10. March 19th, 2013 at 17:30 | #9

    For now the main way is arranging a webex with a sales team who can demo the product. We are also working on a couple of other methods. One method is working on labs we have set up in a sandbox environment on a hosting service Skytap. on Skytap we have serveral environment templates with multiple machines. The environments can be started and the user can step through various Delphix workflows in the lab exercises. We have about 4 hours of labs but no certification test yet. The third option is potentially a blogger version where people could try out the software for evaluation and blog about it. Jonathan Lewis is our first blogger to get blogger version.

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