The Delphix Engine accelerates and streamlines data management for key use cases including application development, testing, analytics, cloud migration, and data protection. This topic describes the basic functions of the Delphix Engine and its underlying technology.
What is the Delphix Engine?
The Delphix Engine virtualizes database infrastructure to provide complete, fully-functional databases that operate in a fraction of the storage space, with improved agility, manageability, and performance.
- The Delphix Engine is a self-contained operating environment and application that is provided as a virtual appliance.
What Does the Delphix Engine Do?
The Delphix Engine links to source physical databases via standard APIs and asks the source databases to send copies of their entire file and log blocks to it. It uses intelligent filtering and compression to reduce the copy of the source database down to as little as 25% of the original size. The copy of the source database stored in the Delphix Engine, along with all incremental updates, is referred to as the dSource in Delphix terminology.
After the initial loading, the Delphix Engine maintains synchronization with source databases based on policy - for example, once daily, or within seconds of the last transaction. Once linked, Delphix maintains a Timeflow of the source database - a rolling record of file and log changes retained by a policy (for example, "keep for two weeks.") From any time within that retention window, a virtual database (referred to in Delphix terminology as a VDB) can be instantly provisioned from the Delphix Engine. VDBs are served from the shared storage footprint of the dSource database Timeflow, so no additional storage is required.
Multiple VDBs can be provisioned from any point in time in a Timeflow, down to the second. Once provisioned, a VDB is an independent, read-write database, and changes made to the VDB by users or applications are written to new, compressed blocks in Delphix storage. VDBs can be provisioned from other VDBs, and the data within VDBs refreshed from its parent VDB or dSource.