First Virtualised Database Platform From Startup Delphix

Delphix is now shipping the first server that can create virtual copies of databases to run concurrently on disk, regardless of size. This allows database administrators to duplicate an entire database, compress it, and then run it on the Delphix server.

This virtualisation server enables any Oracle database to be made mobile, changing the whole idea of the formerly intractable enterprise database.

DB Copies Easier To Manage

“Delphix turns database infrastructure into software that operates in a fraction of the space, while preserving its full functionality and performance,” Delphix founder and CEO Jedidiah Yueh told eWEEK.

Delphix virtualises the data blocks and logs that make up a database, allowing them to be shared across virtual software copies, instead of the redundant hardware copies that most organisations have to make. Most businesses makes seven to nine copies of every production database, Yueh said.

Because it compresses so much structured data, Delphix hopes to figure strongly in storage consolidation. Rather than create redundant copies of infrastructure, Delphix creates a single virtual environment where multiple virtual databases (VDBs) can be instantly provisioned or refreshed from a shared footprint.

“You install it and it just works,” Yueh explained. “There’s quite a bit going on underneath the covers, of course, but you don’t have to be a DB admin to get a copy of a database up and running in, literally, just a few seconds. Just follow the drop-down menu and you’re good.”

Yueh said that the software coordinates any changes and differences in the background, without compromising functionality or performance. He added that his current customers see, typically, a 10-fold reduction in database storage costs.

“The problem that Delphix solves is very real,” Brian Babineau, Enterprise Strategy Group’s senior consulting analyst, told eWEEK.

“IT makes a tremendous number of copies of production databases and applications for a variety of reasons, all of which are usually warranted. The issue is in the time it takes to make these copies and the cost – usually measured in storage capacity expense.”

At the moment, Delphix supports Oracle databases only but, Yueh said, in time the company will add other database platforms to build-out the product.