Delphix architecture with SQL Server
SQL Server is Microsoft’s relational database which is typically run on Windows Server hosts. With Delphix, you can use various SQL Server configurations, ranging from Failover Clusters to Availability Groups. In this section, you’ll find an overview of how Delphix works with SQL Server.
There are three key concepts when using Delphix with any data platform:
Environments: The server and software required to run a data set.
Source Environment: Source data to be ingested into Delphix. These will be used to create dSources.
Target Environment: Target hosts to provision VDBs.
dSources: A database that the Delphix Virtualization Engine uses to create and update or maintain virtual copies of your database
VDBs: A database provisioned from either a dSource or another VDB which is a copy of the source data. A VDB is created and managed by the Delphix Virtualization Engine.
With these concepts in mind, let’s explore how Delphix connects to SQL Server environments and creates SQL Server dSources and VDBs.
Staging push mechanism with SQL server
Starting Delphix Engine version 6.0.13.0 a new data ingestion mechanism has been introduced that will help users to push data into the staging database on their own.
The previous data ingestion mechanism of the SQL Server has a few limitations like dependency on the source access and limited backup vendor's support. Currently, Delphix supports Native, Commvault, NetBackup, Lightspeed, and Redgate backup vendors.
With Staging Push implementation, we have removed the dependency of accessing the customer's production database and also enabled the customers who are using the backup vendors that Delphix does not support.
To summarize the Staging Push mechanism.
Customers now have ownership of the staging databases.
Customers are now responsible to keep the staging database in sync with the source database. Note that the database files of the staging database are stored on Delphix Storage.
Delphix is still responsible to snapshot the underlying data files and gathering any metadata required for provisioning from the snapshots.