Problems with Storage Snapshot based DaaS

Storage Snapshot Cloning Architecture

Customer issues with Storage Snapshot based Cloning

Many customers have mentioned several common problems with their existing storage snapshot based cloning solutions.

To make clones from storage snapshots you must have a full copy of the source database.   It must be a copy because you don’t want to create storage clones on your production storage array and potentially compromise performance.  It must be a full copy because that’s how storage snapshots work.

The major problem here is that you need a mechanism to maintain this full master copy on a different storage array.  Using database vendor specific replication technologies will require you to establish and maintain a variety of solutions if you use more than one database vendor, so most customers use storage replication.  However storage replication does not guard against physical or logical corruption making its way to the replica copy, that might have been avoided using the database vendor replication methods.  In addition we are now locked into the storage vendor for replication, snapshots and clones.

The next issue is that the performance of storage snapshots tends to decline quite rapidly.   Some customers are forced to periodically instantiate new master full copies just to restore performance.   So now we have maintenance, availability and a storage overhead issue.

Finally most storage snapshot solutions do not have automated maintenance workflows to cover the three main requirements for DaaS which are synchronization, governance and provisioning.   For many customers this makes their storage snapshot based cloning solution non-scalable from an operational and performance point of view.

How is Delphix Different

Ø  Delphix is storage agnostic

Ø  Delphix does not require a full copy of the source database(s).

Ø  Delphix automatically synchronizes with source database and retains a compressed de-duplicated copy.

Ø  Delphix can validate the integrity of the Delphix maintained copy.

Ø  Delphix works the same for all supported databases.

Ø  Delphix reduces the workload on the underlying storage by minimizing storage IO.

Ø  Delphix automates the entire DaaS workflow end-to-end.

Ø  Delphix provides self-service interfaces for operational and end-user teams.