Linking a dSource from a DB2 Database: An Overview
Delphix Administration / DB2 Environments and Data Sources / Managing DB2 Data Sources / Linking a dSource from a DB2 Database: An Overview

This topic describes basic concepts behind the creation of dSources from DB2 instances.

Database Level Operation

Associated with an instance is the concept of an instance owner. This is the user who "owns" that instance and has SYSADM authority over the instance and all databases inside that instance. SYSADM authority is the highest level of authority in DB2 and lets this user perform several database management activities such as upgrade, restore, and editing configurations. More information about instances is located in the IBM knowledge center. 

DB2 Database Level Support

Delphix operates at the database level and requires that

  • The staging and target hosts must have the empty instances created prior to Delphix using them
  • The desired OS user to execute commands related to dSource and VDB operation for each instance has been added as an environment user

Note: Make sure staging instance used for linking doesn’t have existing restoring database with the same name.

Data Ingestion

DB2 for Delphix ingests data by using a staging database created on a discovered Standby instance of DB2. The dSource uses the staging database to stay in sync with the production database. This is done by first going through the linking process during which a full backup is used to recover an initial copy of the production database to the staging database. Storage for the staging database is provided by Delphix via an NFS mount to storage exported by the Delphix system.

A single standby instance can contain data from multiple source databases.

Data Synchronization

Delphix provides the following options to keep your dSource in sync with the source database:

  1. During the linking process, you can set up an HADR connection between the original source database and the Standby instance. This allows the Standby instance using HADR for log shipping to always keep its databases in sync with the source. It is important to note that a single Standby instance (dSource) can contain multiple databases from multiple different servers and instances as long as each database has a unique name.
  2. Users can opt for a non-HADR method of database ingestion. The database will be ingested to a standalone staging host and the user can trigger a resynchronization operation with a most recent online full backup to keep the staging database up to date with the source database.
  3. Users can opt for the Delphix Recovery with Backup and Log Ingestion method. During an update, the dSource user can trigger a snapshot operation where user-provided archive logs will get applied to the staging database.



Delphix HADR standby configuration may not meet Db2 DR requirements and should only be used for Delphix use cases.


Virtual Instance (VDB) Provisioning

A VDB is created from any selected dSource snapshot and can be provisioned to any desired instance on a target system. This operation can be executed to any target system running a supported OS environment.

A Db2 instance can be used to create multiple Delphix dSources and VDBs. Delphix allows also to combine these 2 object types on a single engine.

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