Product information
Overview
Delphix Engines are delivered and maintained as a closed virtual software appliance. Like all virtual appliances, these engines are a tightly integrated combination of a special-purpose operating system and business logic; The Continuous Data Engine can be configured for data virtualization, while the Continuous Compliance Engine can be configured for data masking.
The product is delivered as a closed appliance, due to dependencies between software components within the virtual appliance that require end-to-end testing. Delphix does not provide administrative access to the operating system for any reason, including installing software, making customizations, or performing security scans. More details about the administrative model are provided in later sections of this page.
Packaging
Delphix software is delivered and maintained as a virtual software appliance. The mode of product delivery is dependent on the hosting hypervisor platform described in the table below:
Hypervisor Platform | Delivery Vehicle | Notes |
|---|---|---|
VMware ESXi | OVA image | |
Amazon AWS EC2 | AMI image | Manual deployment to EC2 |
Amazon AWS EC2 | Guest Machine Appliance | Amazon Marketplace |
Microsoft Azure | Guest Machine Appliance | Azure Marketplace |
Google Cloud Platform | Guest Machine Appliance | |
Hyper V | Hyper image |
Updates, upgrades, and versions
Regardless of the initial packaging used to deploy Continuous Data or Continuous Compliance engines, updates are supplied as a single upgrade image of the new release, and the same image can be used for any prior release from which an upgrade is supported. This upgrade image delivers a completely new appliance, including both the operating system and business logic components.
The upgrade process retains prior configuration and user data to ensure that nothing is lost during the upgrade process, in addition to retaining a copy of the previous version of the components for automatic recovery in case an upgrade fails. Installed versions older than the prior version are automatically deleted during the upgrade.
There is no component patching of Continuous Data or Continuous Compliance engines; fixes are delivered in new versions of the software as a new software appliance. There is no management of patches involved and each engine version is a consistent, tested virtual appliance.
Administration
Administration of Continuous Data or Continuous Compliance engines happens through product interfaces only. These interfaces provide the proper configuration and testing of user infrastructure components, such as network addresses, storage, Domain Name Service (DNS) servers, authentication servers (LDAP), etc. The interfaces also control the business logic and control of the overall platform, including how data is used and provisioned by the system.
Although the special-purpose operating system may be accessed by Delphix Support and Engineering personnel for the purpose of diagnostics and problem remediation, there are no user-accessible interfaces at the operating system level. Users are not provided access to the underlying operating system nor can any custom software be installed on the appliance.
Customization
The product has several endpoints allowing customization for improved integration with user environments, local business workflow requirements, and alternative data sources.
Interface | Functional Area | Description |
|---|---|---|
Data Plugins | Continuous Data | Delivered by Delphix Services or Integration Partners. These plugins allow for supporting additional data types including both structured and unstructured data. |
Privilege Elevation Profiles | Continuous Data | Delivered by Delphix Services or Integration Partners. These customizations allow for the use of privilege mechanisms other than sudo on Linux and Unix target environments. Sudo is the product default. |
Hook Scripts | Continuous Data | These user-managed scripts allow for custom business logic to be applied to Oracle and SQL Server data sources and virtual databases. The scripts are not integrated into the appliance but are referenced and invoked by the product during data operations. |
Custom Algorithms | Continuous Compliance | Delivered by Delphix Services or Integration Partners. Custom algorithms provide specialized data transformations to secure or anonymize sensitive data. |
In addition to these endpoints, Delphix provides a robust set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that enable business automation and fully integrated data operations into client workflows.