Delphix product Information
Product overview
The Delphix Engine is delivered and maintained as a closed virtual software appliance. Like all virtual appliances, the Delphix Engine is a tightly integrated combination of a special-purpose operating system and business logic. A single engine can be configured for data virtualization or data masking.
The product is delivered as a closed appliance because there are dependencies between software components within the virtual appliance, which require end-to-end testing. As such, we do 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 will be provided in later sections of this document.
Product packaging
The DevOps Data Platform 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 |
Product updates, upgrades, and versions
Regardless of the initial packaging used to deploy the Delphix Engine, 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 customer data such that no data or configuration is lost during the upgrade process. The upgrade process retains 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.
Delphix characterizes software as Major Release, Minor Release, and Maintenance Release in the Delphix Support Policies. These release types indicate the level of feature addition and change. For example, a Major Release may introduce significant new features, interface changes, and many bug fixes. A Maintenance Release or Patch Release may deliver only a small number of bug fixes and no feature additions. In any case, each release delivers a complete upgrade image of the appliance.
There is no component patching of the Delphix Engine; fixes are delivered in new versions of the software as a new software appliance. There is no management of patches involved, and each Delphix Engine version is a consistent, tested virtual appliance.
Product administration
Administration of the Delphix Engine is effected through product interfaces only. These interfaces provide for the proper configuration and testing of customer 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 customer 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 customer-accessible interfaces at the operating system level. Customers are not provided access to the underlying operating system nor can any custom software be installed on the appliance.
Product customization
The product has several endpoints allowing customization for improved integration with customer environments, local business workflow requirements, and alternative data sources.
Interface | Functional Area | Description |
|---|---|---|
Data Plugins | Data Virtualization | Delivered by Delphix Services or Integration partners. These plugins allow for supporting additional data types including both structured and unstructured data. |
Privilege Elevation Profiles | Data Virtualization | 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 | Data Virtualization | These customer-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 | Data Masking | 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.