Delphix as a smart NFS Server

Delphix AppData over NFS

Delphix is best known for its ability to automatically virtualize entire databases but Delphix can also be used to virtualize filesystem files and folders.  This capability is called AppData which is designed to virtualize application software or any data held in files and folders.

There are two methods of using AppData to synchronise with files and folders.  You can either have Delphix synchronise by periodically scanning a set of folders to capture updates or you can manage the updates yourself by using an AppData mount point.

Delphix can provision virtual storage and present that to a server as an NFS mount point, what we call a virtual mount point, vMount.  You can then copy data into that mount point and because the copied data is managed by Delphix, the data is catalogued, compressed and de-duplicated between copied versions.   Now that Delphix has one or more copies you can provision shared copies of any version of this data to another server over NFS or as a physical copy.

A common use case for this approach is to handle databases that Delphix does not yet natively support.  At the time of writing we support Oracle, SQL Server, SAP ASE (Sybase), Postgres, MySQL and DB2.

For example, Sybase IQ is one of the most commonly used columnar databases used for analytics.   Like many analytics environments it is not usually possible to expand the read capacity because the databases are by nature very large and the cost and time would make provisioning more copies to expand read capacity too expensive.

Using Delphix AppData the process to ingest, govern and provision copies of Sybase IQ are:

1.     Provision storage for IQ backups using a Delphix mount point (vMount)

2.     Restore an existing backup into the vMount, optionally rename.  Initially restore a full backup but subsequently restore either a full, incremental or incremental since full backup.

3.     Bounce the Sybase IQ residing on the vMount to check validity of the restore

4.     Take a Delphix snapshot of the vMount and optionally create a bookmark

5.     Provision a virtual copy of a chosen backup version over NFS to a separate target server

6.     Startup Sybase IQ on the target server running against IQ database files provisioned by Delphix

This method will allow you to save a set of discrete, compressed and de-duplicated versions of your IQ database in Delphix via an NFS mount.

Being a columnar database Sybase IQ gets great compression on its raw data which means the IQ database files are highly compressed.  Delphix will still get some compression on those backup copies, however the main benefits of using Delphix in this way are:

1.     Each subsequent restore is de-duplicated and hence only deltas are held for each backup version.

2.     Full read-write copies of the entire IQ database can be provisioned in minutes, expanding the read/analytics capacity.

3.     All the database maintenance activity on the source IQ database carries on independently of all the virtual copies.

4.     As and when new versions of the source IQ database are copied to Delphix users can refresh their own copies to the latest version or stick with the one they have if preferred.

5.     If desired, Delphix can provision other databases alongside Sybase IQ

Summary

Delphix can act as a very smart NFS server allowing access to private copies of almost any data of any size, near instantly with minimal storage or operational overhead.