Delphix stays in sync with source databases by monitoring the ASE backup server log. When it sees a new database dump or transaction log has been created, it attempts to load it into the ASE staging instance.

Before proceeding with setting up environments, decide where the databases will be located relative to the ASE staging instance. In the following diagram, we have two ASE hosts (production and staging).

If the database dumps (or transaction logs) are available locally to the staging Backup Server, Delphix considers them “local”. Whereas if they are available to a Backup Server on production, they are “remote”. If the files will be local to the staging server, there are many options to get them from the production host to the staging host including but not limited to:

• Sharing the directory on the production host over NFS to the staging host.

• Using Network Attached Storage (NAS) to replicate the files.

• Using scp to copy the files from one host to the other.

If the files are only available on the production host, Delphix will login to the ASE staging instance and issue the “LOAD DATABASE” command using the remote server syntax (for example LOAD DATABASE pubs2 FROM "/dumps/pubs2.full.9_5_16" AT Prod_BS).

Deploy OVA on VMware

Setup Network Access to Delphix Engine

Setting Up the Delphix Engine

Once you set up the network access for Delphix Engine, navigate to the Delphix Engine URL in your browser for server setup. 

The welcome screen below will appear for you to begin your Delphix Engine setup.

The setup procedure uses a wizard process to take you through a set of configuration screens:

• Administrators
• Time
• Network
• Network Security
• Storage
• Serviceability
• Authentication
• Network Authorization
• Registration
• Summary

1. Connect to the Delphix Engine at http://<Delphix Engine>/login/index.html#serverSetup.
   The Delphix Setup application will launch when you connect to the server.
   Enter your sysadmin login credentials, which initially defaults to the username sysadmin, with the initial default password of sysadmin.  On first login, you will be prompted to change the initial default password.
2. Click Next.

Administrators

The Delphix Engine supports two types of administrators:

• System Administrator (sysadmin) - this is the engine system administrator. The sysadmin password is defined here.

• Engine Administrator (admin) - this is typically a DBA who will administer all the data managed by the engine.

On the Administrators tab, you set up the sysadmin password by entering an email address and password. The details for the admin are displayed for reference. 

System Time

The engine time is used as the baseline for setting policies that coordinate between virtual databases and external applications.

Choose your option to set up system time in this section. For a Quick Start, simply set the time and your timezone. You can change this later.

Network

The initial out-of-the-box network configuration in the OVA file is set to use a single VMXNET3 network adapter.

You have already configured this in the initial configuration. Delphix supports more advanced configurations, but you can enable those later.

Storage

You should see the data storage VMDKs or RDMs you created during the OVA installation. Click Next to configure these for data storage.

Serviceability

Choose your options to configure serviceability settings.

For a Quick Start, accept the defaults. You can change this later.

Authentication

Choose your options to configure authentication services.

For a Quick Start, accept the defaults. You can change this later.

Registration

If the Delphix Engine has access to the external Internet (either directly or through a web proxy), then you can auto-register the Delphix Engine:

1. Enter your Support Username and Support Password.
2. Click Register.

If external connectivity is not immediately available, you must perform manual registration.

1. Copy the Delphix Engine registration code in one of two ways:
   
   1. Manually highlight the registration code and copy it to clipboard. Or,
   2. Click Copy Registration Code to Clipboard.
2. Transfer the Delphix Engine's registration code to a workstation with access to the external network Internet. For example, you could e-mail the registration code to an externally accessible e-mail account.
3. On a machine with access to the external Internet, please use your browser to navigate to the Delphix Registration Portal at http://register.delphix.com.
4. Login with your Delphix support credentials (username and password).
5. Paste the Registration Code.
6. Click Register.

To regenerate the registration code for a Delphix Engine please refer to, Regenerating the Delphix Engine Registration Code. Delphix strongly recommends that you regenerate this code and re-register the engine regularly to maximize the Support Security of the Delphix Engine. Delphix recommends doing this every six months.

Summary

The final summary tab will enable you to review your configurations for System Time, Network, Storage, Serviceability, and Authentication. 

1. Click the Back button to go back and to change the configuration for any of these server settings.
2. If you are ready to proceed, then click Submit.
3. Click Yes to confirm that you want to save the configuration.
4. Click Setup to acknowledge the successful configuration.
5. There will be a wait of several minutes as the Delphix Engine completes the configuration.

Requirements for SAP ASE Hosts and Databases

In order to begin using SAP ASE environments with Delphix, you will need to configure the source and target hosts with the requirements described on this page.

SAP ASE Source Host Requirements

There must be an operating system user, such as delphix_os, that meets the following requirements:

• The $SYBASE environment variable is defined for non-interactive shells (such as via the .bashrc configuration file). 

  • Set the PermitUserEnvironment configuration parameter to "yes" in the sshd_config file

  • Add the variable to the user's .ssh/environment file

  • Restart the SSH daemon

• To test this requirement:

ssh delphix_user@ase_hostname env | grep SYBASE

• Can login to the source host via SSH (TCP port 22)

• Delphix requires superuser permission to run pargs in order to discover Solaris ASE instances. For more information,  see Sudo Privilege Requirements for SAP ASE Environments.

• Designating the Delphix operating system user’s primary group to be the same as the ASE instance’s means the file system permissions can be more restrictive and is a better security practice than granting world read access to the toolkit or the backup files. If the target host is used to host the staging databases, consider the following:

  • If you don’t add the Delphix operating system user to the ASE instance owner’s group, greater permissions will need to be granted to the backup files to ensure read access to the dumps and/or transaction logs. Delphix looks for the backup files on the staging host (unless a "remote" backup server is used in which case, the remote host is used which is often the source environment).

  • If you sync Delphix with a dSource by asking ASE to create a new backup, the ASE instance owner will need the write permission to the toolkit (or the mount point if you use the CLI to specify a directory other than the toolkit). Delphix will issue the "DUMP DATABASE" command to write to staging database's "temp" directory which is mounted on the staging host.

  • Has write permission for the mount-point directory (by default the toolkit directory but can be a separate mount point specified in the command line interface).

• There must be a directory on the source host where you can install the Delphix platform toolkit, for example: /var/opt/delphix/Toolkit

• The delphix_os user must own the directory

• The directory must have permissions 0770, for example, -rwxrwx---. However, you can also use more permissive settings.

• The directory should have 256MB of available storage.

Source Database Requirements

When adding a source ASE environment to Delphix, you may use a single login to discover the ASE instances and link the source databases OR you may use a single login to discover all of the ASE instances and separate logins to link each dSource.

• Delphix uses a single database user for the discovery of all ASE instances and their databases for each environment added to Delphix.

  • The discovery database user (delphix_disc for example) must have SELECT privileges on the following tables for each ASE instance on the source host:

    • sysdatabases

    • sysservers

    • syslisteners

    • sysconfigures
      

    • syscurconfigs
      

• Another user must be specified when linking each dSource (delphix_link for example) that has SELECT privileges on the above tables.

• If you will select New Full Backup when linking, this user must also have privileges to take a new full database dump of the source database. For more information about linking options, see Linking an SAP ASE Data Source.

• The link database user can be different for each instance and database on the source host.

Target Host Requirements

• The operating system on the target environment must be the same as, or binary compatible with, the operating system on the source environment.

• As the Delphix Engine uses NFSv3 for mounting target host filesystems, the prerequisite packages to support NFSv3 client communication are required for normal operation, and the required services to support NFS client communications (including file locking) must be running.  This includes:

  1. 1. portmapper / rpcbind
     2. status daemon (rpc.statd)
     3. NFS lock manager (rpc.lockd/lockmgr)

• The SAP ASE major version on the target environment must be the same as the version on the source environment. However, EBF/SP version on target environment can be different. If the target is used as a staging server, the ASE major version must be the same. The only caveat is for ASE 15.7 - where the source and staging patch levels must both be either any version below SP64 or both be any version above SP100.

• There must be an operating system user, such as delphix_os, that meets the following requirements:

  1. Set the PermitUserEnvironment configuration parameter to "yes" in the sshd_config file

  2. Add the variable to the user's .ssh/environment file

  3. Restart the SSH daemon

• The $SYBASE environment variable is set for non-interactive shells (such as via the .bashrc configuration file).  Set the variable as follows:

• To test this requirement:

ssh delphix_user@ase_hostname env | grep SYBASE

• Can login to the target host via Secure Shell (SSH)

• Can login to ASE instances using isql with LANG=C set

• Designating the Delphix operating system user’s primary group to be the same as the ASE instance’s means the file system permissions can be more restrictive and is a better security practice than granting world read access to the toolkit or the backup files. If the target host is used to host the staging databases, consider the following:

  • If you don’t add the Delphix operating system user to the ASE instance owner’s group, greater permissions will need to be granted to the backup files to ensure read access to the dumps and/or transaction logs. Delphix looks for the backup files on the staging host (unless a "remote" backup server is used in which case, the remote host is used which is often the source environment).

  • If you sync Delphix with a dSource by asking ASE to create a new backup, the ASE instance owner will need write permission to the toolkit (or the mount point if you use the CLI to specify a directory other than the toolkit). Delphix will issue the "DUMP DATABASE" command to write to staging database's "temp" directory which is mounted on the staging host.

  • Has write permission for the mount-point directory (by default the toolkit directory but can be a separate mount point specified in the command line interface).

• The following permissions are usually granted via sudo authorization of the commands. See Sudo Privilege Requirements for SAP ASE Environments for further explanation of this requirement, and Sudo File Configuration Examples for SAP ASE Environments for example file configurations.

  • Permission to run mount and umount as super-user.

  • On Solaris, permission to run pargs on Solaris

  • On AIX, permission to run the nfso command as super-user.

  • (Optional) On AIX and Linux, permission to run ps as super-user.

  • Disable tty for the delphix_os user for mount and umount.
    

• There must be a directory on the source host where you can install the Delphix platform toolkit, for example: /var/opt/delphix/Toolkit
  

  • The delphix_os user must own the directory

  • The directory must have permissions 0770, for example, -rwxrwx--. However, you can also use more permissive settings.

  • The directory should have 1GB of available storage

  • Avoid using the home directory of the delphix_os user

  • If you intend to use the LogSync feature, it is recommended to make the toolkit directory as short as possible to keep the full path to the transaction log file names under ASE's 127 character limit. For example, create the toolkit directory as /tk. Alternatively, link the dSource using the command line interface and specify the "mountBase" parameter to mount the staging database's devices under a directory following your own naming convention.

Target Database Requirements

• There must be a database user, such as delphix_db, with the sa_role on each instance on the target environment
• The database user such as delphix_db for any staging instances must also have the sybase_ts_role
• If the target host will be used as a staging target environment (see Managing SAP ASE Environments Overview), at least one of the following two options must be configured:
  • You must use sp_addserver to add the staging ASE instance's Backup Server to sysservers on the source ASE instance (so that remote database dump/load works)

    OR

  • Full and transaction dump files from the source database must be available locally to the staging database (over NFS, replication, scp, etc.)

Specific ASE Tuning Recommendations

• In ASE 15.7 SP60 and higher, there is a configuration parameter named "enable large pool for load". ASE automatically tunes the caches for recovery on reboot, but does not do this for load database and load transaction recovery, since it could impact other databases on a production server. Delphix recommends that the staging ASE instance be separate from the ASE production instance and ASE instances hosting VDBs so enabling this parameter should have a beneficial impact on performance for the ASE staging instance.
• Specify the "relaxed" strategy for replacing the cache in the default data cache (sp_cacheconfig ‘default data cache’, relaxed) in the ASE staging instance. Since the mount/unmount process invalidates the pages anyway, the page chain is really just unneeded overhead on the staging server.
• Staging and target ASE instances should have disk mirroring disabled.

           sp_configure "disable disk mirroring" – run value should be 1, which is the default.  If it is 0, change it using

           sp_configure "disable disk mirroring", 1  – this parameter is static so the ASE instance must be restarted for this change to take effect.

• Delphix will mirror the number of devices used on the source database for the staging database (dSource) and each VDB created from that source database. The number of devices parameter should be scaled appropriately based on the max number of virtual databases that will be provisioned to the ASE instance. This parameter can be changed using: sp_configure "number of devices", <max devices>.

To support multiple VDBs and the staging databases, you may need to increase the parameter number of alarms.

Adding SAP ASE Source and Target Environments

Follow the steps below to add both source and target environments for SAP ASE.

1. Login to the Delphix Management application.
2. Click Manage.
3. Select Environments.
4. Click the Plus icon next to Environments.
5. In the Add Environment dialog, select Unix/Linux.
6. Select Standalone Host.
7. Enter the Host IP address.
8. Enter a Name for the environment.
9. Enter the SSH port.
10. The default value is 22.
11. Enter a Username for the environment.
12. Select Login Type.
13. For Password, enter the password associated with the user in Step 10.
14. For Password Login, click Verify Credentials to test the username and password.
15. Enter a Toolkit Path.
16. The toolkit directory stores scripts used for Delphix Engine operations. It must have a persistent working directory rather than a temporary one. The toolkit directory will have a separate sub-directory for each database instance. The toolkit path must have 0770 permissions.
17. Click the Discover SAP ASE checkbox.
18. Enter the database Username for an ASE instance on the environment.
19. Enter the database Password associated with the database user in Step 15.
20. Click Submit.

ASE Manual Discovery

When an environment is added, Delphix discovers your ASE instances. Manual discovery allows users to add instances that were not automatically discovered. This feature is currently only supported via the CLI.

This topic describes how to use CLI commands to manually add ASE repositories to an SAP ASE environment.  Discovery is the process by which the Delphix platform identifies data sources and data dependencies on a remote environment. ASE repository discovery is done automatically when an environment is added to the Delphix platform or when an already added environment is refreshed. In some cases, automatic discovery does not discover all of the repositories in an SAP ASE environment. These repositories may be added using manual discovery.

Unlike automatically discovered instances, manually discovered instances are not automatically deleted if the environment is refreshed when the instance isn't running. Manually discovered instances are not updated during an environment refresh either. So for example, if you upgrade ASE to a new version or change the listener port, you must manually update the repository.

To manually discover an ASE repository you will need to:

• Add the environment to Delphix
• Use CLI to manually discover a repository

Creating an ASE Environment

Please refer to Adding an SAP ASE Environment for detailed steps.

Manually discovering a repository

$ ssh delphix_admin@sc-dev3.dc2
Password:
sc-dev3.dc2> cd repository
sc-dev3.dc2 repository>

sc-dev3.dc2 repository> create
sc-dev3.dc2 repository create *> ls
Properties
  type: ASEInstance
  credentials: (unset)
  dbUser: (unset)
  environment: (required)
  installationPath: (required)
  instanceName: (required)
  instanceOwner: (required)
  ports: (required)
  version: (unset)
sc-dev3.dc2 repository create *> set credentials.password=sybase
sc-dev3.dc2 repository create *> set dbUser=sa
sc-dev3.dc2 repository create *> set environment=sc-rhel64-sybase-ase-0
sc-dev3.dc2 repository create *> set installationPath=/opt/sybase/15-7
sc-dev3.dc2 repository create *> set instanceName=ASE1570_S1
sc-dev3.dc2 repository create *> set instanceOwner=sybase
sc-dev3.dc2 repository create *> set ports=5100
sc-dev3.dc2 repository create *> ls
Properties
  type: ASEInstance
  credentials:
      type: PasswordCredential (*)
      password: ******** (*)
  dbUser: sa (*)
  environment: sc-rhel64-sybase-ase-0 (*)
  installationPath: /opt/sybase/15-7 (*)
  instanceName: ASE1570_S1 (*)
  instanceOwner: sybase (*)
  ports: 5100 (*)
  version: (unset)
sc-dev3.dc2 repository create *> commit
  `ASE_INSTANCE-22
sc-dev3.dc2 repository>

sc-dev3.dc2> repository
sc-dev3.dc2 repository> select ASE1570_S1
sc-dev3.dc2 repository 'ASE1570_S1'> update
sc-dev3.dc2 repository 'ASE1570_S1' update *> set version="15.7 SP138"
sc-dev3.dc2 repository 'ASE1570_S1' update *> ls
Properties
   type: ASEInstance
   credentials:
       type: PasswordCredential
       password: ********
   dbUser: sa
   installationPath: /opt/sybase/15-7
   instanceOwner: sybase
   linkingEnabled: true
   ports: 5100
   provisioningEnabled: true
   servicePrincipalName: (unset)
   staging: false
   version: 15.7 SP138 (*)
sc-dev3.dc2 repository 'ASE1570_S1' update *> commit