New Features
Release Notes / Release Notes 6.0.x. / New Features

This section includes new features Delphix has added to its existing products or services. 

Release 6.0.4.0

Virtualization

  • HashiCorp and expanded CyberArk Support:
    Delphix has extended both CyberArk and HashiCorp Vault support to Oracle Database Users in addition to previously supported SAP ASE and MSSQL domain users. GUI support for HashiCorp Vault has been added during setup to authenticate host users and database users.

    The HashiCorp namespace Enterprise feature will be supported starting 6.0.6.0.

  • NFSv4 Support:
    Support has been added for SuSE and Db2 on AIX.

Masking

  • Masking Job Memory Improvements:
    Memory management has been dramatically improved. Not only can jobs run with less memory, but the Masking Engine will also now ensure that jobs can only run if enough memory is available and that the engine cannot run out of memory.

  • Extensible Connector Permissions Change: The first iteration of the Masking Extensible Connectors, supporting the ability to upload and use JDBC drivers, required that the permissions for each driver be enumerated at install time. Delphix has now replaced this mechanism with a fixed security policy blocking only the most dangerous permissions (specifically those that could inflict harm to the Masking Engine), removing the need for user management of permissions. It remains the case that the engine administrator must ensure that only trusted JDBC driver software is installed.

  • New Secure Lookup Algorithm:
    In 6.0.3, Delphix introduced the Masking Algorithm SDK. In addition to enabling our partners and customers to write new algorithms, Delphix also intends to use this to introduce new variants of our built-in algorithms. The first of these is a new Secure Lookup Algorithm.
    The new Secure Lookup Algorithm framework provides improved masking performance, stronger encryption, the ability to call this built-in algorithm from inside an extended algorithm, and options for case sensitivity.

  • File Masking Performance:
    The performance of file masking has been significantly improved. 

  • Builtin Extended Secure Lookup Framework:

    Delphix has added a builtin, configurable Secure Lookup Algorithm Framework, based on the Extended Algorithms
    feature (introduced in 6.0.3.0 release).

    This framework provides better performance and new features when compared with the Legacy Secure Lookup Algorithms.

    It allows configuring the case sensitivity of input values (true/false), and the case configuration of the output values:

    Preserve Lookup File Case // i.e. as found in Lookup File
    Preserve Input Case // i.e. preserve case of input value - UpperCase / LowerCase / Mixed
    Force all Lowercase // forces output to LowerCase
    Force all Uppercase // forces output to UpperCase

    The algorithm instance (based on the new Secure Lookup Algorithm Framework) might be managed via the existing Algorithm API, similar to any other plugin algorithm.
    The GUI has been changed for configuring/editing the Secure Lookup Algorithm. For details please see Secure Lookup Algorithm Framework. 

  • Job Scheduler Removed: 
    As of this release, Delphix has removed the Job Scheduler feature. The introduction of Masking’s REST API several releases ago allowed customers to schedule job executions using their preferred job scheduler. As a result, the integrated scheduler is seldom used.

Data Control Tower (Formerly, Central Management)

  • Users and Groups:
    Delphix is introducing a new model of managing access to data. Rather than assigning each individual user ownership on a per-engine, per-data set basis, customers can create data access groups, by defining access for groups of datasets that can span multiple engines and the set of users that can then access these groups. Access to these groups may be set on a per-user basis or via attributes/groups defined in the customers’ identity providers (including LDAP/Active Directory via federation). 

  • Connectivity Update:
    To simplify the customer onboarding process, Delphix has made changes to how the engines connect to Data Control Tower. First, an engine’s cloud agent will respect any configured proxy settings. Second, the engine will automatically route all traffic through api.delphix.com if direct access to our certificate management service (GoDaddy) is unavailable. 

Certifications

  • Virtualization
    • OCI Support
    • NFSv4 support for Db2 on AIX and SuSE
    • SQL Server Instances with a Managed Service Account

  • Masking

    • SQL Server 2017 and 2019

Release 6.0.3.0

Virtualization

  • CyberArk and Hashicorp Vault Support for Virtualization:
    Delphix is introducing password vault support to authenticate environment and database linking and will support both CyberArk with Oracle and Hashicorp with CLI only.

  • Capacity Management:
    Understanding where and how storage is used on Virtualization Engines can be a challenge, in particular, understanding how and where space is held and how to recover it. In this release, Delphix provides better details of held space, particularly around locked objects, and provides clear instructions about what steps are required to free up space. 

  • Diagnosability:
    Additional performance health-check analytics in phone-home have been added to better troubleshoot and understand customer problems. 
  • Powershell Upgrade:
    Delphix is reducing our requirements for Windows hosts running PowerShell by allowing you to use any PowerShell version from 2.0 to 5.1. Delphix will now use the default available PowerShell version on each host. When specifying hooks (such as “configureClone”), users may specify whether to use 2.0 or whatever PowerShell version is installed on the host.
  • Support for Oracle Read-only Homes: 
    Delphix is introducing support for Oracle read-only homes, which is a new Oracle feature starting with Oracle 18c. In a read-only Oracle home, all the configuration data and log files reside outside of the read-only Oracle home. This feature allows you to use the read-only Oracle home as a software image that can be distributed across multiple servers.
  • Replication Performance:
    Delphix will continue to improve replication performance for replication specifications that include multiple objects and single-object replication throughput. 
  •  SAP ASE Support for VDB Upgrade:
    SAP ASE Customers will now be able to validate DBMS Upgrades with this feature that enables provisioning VDBs to a higher version than the source DB (e.g. ASE 15.7 > ASE 16).

  • Shared NFS for Toolkits

    With this release, Delphix introduces shared NFS for clustered environments. Customers wish to use a common NFS mount point, in which the Delphix toolkit for each cluster node can be deployed. The product today only creates a directory with appliance UUID and OS user in the folder name and uses this for detection to determine if a host is already managed by that Engine. As such, this prevents the customer from utilizing common NFS storage due to name conflict.

    When a new environment is created, upgraded or if the toolkit path is changed, a new toolkit is created with naming convention Delphix_COMMON_<last 12 characters of engine ID>_<last 12 characters of host ID>_<user ref>_<host or cluster> for common directory and Delphix_<last 12 characters of engine ID>_<last 12 characters of host ID>_<user ref>_<host or cluster> for user directory.

    With this change, the customer can use mounts on shared file systems (like NFS) as a toolkit path for clustered environments without any naming conflict.

    This change is not intended for windows environments.

Masking

  • Extended Algorithms
    We introduced a new, radically simpler, method to create new masking algorithms. With the new framework, Delphix partners and customers can create and share new algorithms. Extended algorithms and their related algorithm plugins can be managed through the following APIs:

    GroupEndpointsDescription
    pluginGET /pluginGet all plugins

    		POST /pluginInstall plugin

    		DELETE /plugin/{pluginId}Delete plugin

    		GET /plugin/{pluginId}Get plugin detail by pluginid

    		PUT /plugin/{pluginId}Update plugin

    Existing algorithm API is extended with the following endpoints:

    GroupEndpointsDescription
    algorithmGET /algorithm/frameworksGet all algorithm frameworks

    		GET /algorithm/frameworks/id/{frameworkId}Get algorithm framework by frameworkId



  • UI-based Environment Sync
    Over the past several releases Delphix has introduced and refined the ability to synchronize objects between Masking Engines via the API. In 6.0.3, Delphix now supports importing and exporting environments via the UI.

    In this release, the deprecated XML import/export functionality has been removed. If you used the XML import/export feature in previous releases, you'll find the new Sync Environment feature to be a more robust and complete solution with complete API support in addition to being available in the UI.
  • New SQL Server JDBC Driver

    The product switched from the jTDS JDBC driver to Microsoft's official open-source JDBC driver. This was done to obtain improved support for recent versions of SQL Server.

    All SQL Server basic connectors will be converted transparently. If you used a SQL Server Advanced connector or a Generic connector using the jTDS driver, you will need to manually convert your JDBC URL to the Microsoft JDBC driver's format. To perform this conversion, please see the references for the jTDS parameters and the Microsoft JDBC parameters. Delphix Customer Support's upgrade validation checks will detect any SQL Server Advanced connectors and Generic connectors using the jTDS driver in your installation and they will notify you of the need to manually convert those connectors.

  • AzureSQL Managed Databases
    This release is certified to be compatible with the following AuzreSQL Managed Databases:
    • Azure Database for PostgreSQL service
    • Azure Database for MySQL service
    • Azure Database for MariaDB service
    • Azure Database for SQL

You must enable support for non-TLS connections.

  • File Masking Performance
    This release contains significant performance improvements for delimited and XML file masking.

Certifications

  • Masking

    • AzureSQL

    • Azure Database for PostgreSQL service

    • Azure Database for MySQL service

    • Azure Database for MariaDB service

  • Virtualization

    • EBS 12.2 with RHEL 7.6

    • PostgreSQL 12.1 & 12.2 with RHEL 7.8

    • Oracle 11g R2 and Oracle 19c with RHEL 7.8 on 5.3.9.0 and 6.0.2+

Release 6.0.2.0

Virtualization

  • Support for Db2 Database Partition Feature (DPF):
    Delphix has long supported distributed Db2 (running on Unix/Linux Systems). However, Db2 supports partitioned databases as a means of scaling to larger, more complex systems. With this release, Delphix will now support Db2 DPF allowing you to scale to an increasing number of your Db2 databases.

  • Windows Authentication for SQL Server:
    You will now be able to use Windows Authentication to link SQL Server databases. Rather than providing both a database user and a Windows user to ingest data, you can leverage one set of credentials (a Windows OS user) to perform all source operations. This capability will simplify SQL Server deployments and reduce Delphix’s security requirements on source databases.

  • Smart Failover:
    Smart Failover allows the Delphix Administrator to simplify failover processes by automating object conflict resolution. By selecting a new option “Automate Object Conflict Resolution” before the failover process starts, the failover process will rename all conflicting objects and show a report of all object changes at the end.

  • NFSv4 Support: In 6.0.2 Delphix will start providing NFSv4 for data sources running on RedHat 7.0 or later. NFSv4 can be enabled using the CLI. Support for additional host OS versions will be added in subsequent releases. Delphix will consider enabling NFSv4 by default for those supported configurations in a future release.

  • Support Bundles not Required for Upgrade: When upgrading from 6.0.0 or greater to a release 6.0.2 or greater, we no longer require support bundles to be sent to Delphix. This allows you to execute more self-service upgrades.

Masking

  • Mainframe Data Set Improvements for Masking
    This release delivers multiple quality-of-experience enhancements around mainframe masking workflows:
    • Mainframe Masking Performance: Anyone masking mainframe data sets may see a large improvement in performance.
    • Engine Sync Support for Mainframe: The Sync APIs and workflows now support mainframe objects: connectors, rule sets, jobs, and file formats.
    • Mainframe Support for Record Type APIs: This enhancement builds upon the recent release of Record Type APIs to include mainframe support. You will now be able to create and manage Mainframe file record types via REST API, including redefine conditions.
  • JDBC to Delimited Files Support
    On-the-fly masking jobs with a JDBC source and delimited file target are now supported. This is targeted at users with data lake applications. This is targeted at users with data lake applications who wish to extract unmasked data using a JDBC connection and insert masked data back using a bulk file load mechanism.
  • Environment Sync Support for Masking
    With this release, an entire environment is now syncable with a single operation via the Sync REST APIs. Previously, Sync users would have to export/import objects on an individual basis, the process now is far more streamlined. Note: Environment Sync APIs are the preferred way of handling environment export/import versus XML-based transfer.
  • New API version 5.1.2 in this release
    To reflect the API improvements mentioned above, the API version increased to 5.1.2 in this release. For a complete listing of version 5.1.2, see the Masking API Client page.

Certifications

  • ASE 16.0 on AIX 7.1

  • AWS r5n Instance Support: r5n.2xlarge, r5n.8xlarge, r5n.16xlarge

  • Azure E Series Instance Support: E8s_v3, E16s_v3, E32s_v3

  • Masking support of Oracle 19c.

Release 6.0.1.0

  • Masking Extended Connectors: A very common request for masking has been to support additional data sources, outside of the currently supported list. Thus, the next step in the strategy is the release of Masking Extended Connectors, which will allow our customers to add JDBC drivers to the masking engine to facilitate the masking of additional data sources. This will allow masking to be used for other common databases that can be accessed via JDBC, like SAP HANA, Informix, etc.

  • SQL Server CDC Support: We have expanded our support for SQL Server databases using Change Data Capture (CDC), a SQL Server feature that captures all the change information that is applied to the databases and stores it in change tables. Now, users will have the ability to preserve CDC data and enable CDC for SQL Server VDBs.

Certifications

  • Virtualization
    • ASE 16 and 15.7 with Solaris SPARC 11U3 and SPARC 11U4 
    • ASE 16 and 15.7 with RHEL 7.7
    • SQL Server 2019 Support with Windows 2016 and Windows 2019
    • Oracle 19c with SUSE SLES 15 SP1
    • Oracle 19c with Solaris 11 U4 and U3 x86

  • Hypervisors: The following hypervisors have been certified in 6.0.1.

    • VMware ESX 6.5 U1, U2, U3

    • VMware ESX 6.7 U3

Release 6.0.0.0

Google Cloud Support:  Delphix now supports running in Google Cloud Platform for existing supported databases.

Enhanced Networking Adapter (ENA) Support: Delphix supports networking on AWS instances with the Elastic Network Adapter (ENA). This offers our customers enhanced networking capabilities and more economical options. Notably, this includes the AWS R4 instance types.

  • Masking NFS/CIFS Mount: Our customers increasingly are masking files alongside their databases. The masking engine has classically supported this via FTP/SFTP but now to make things easier Delphix has introduced the ability to directly mount and mask a file system - over NFS and CIFS. This should dramatically simplify the process of file masking.

  • Oracle Quality: Continued focus on Oracle quality and have introduced several quality improvements with our 6.0 release. 

  • Masking API Updates: 6.0 introduces a significant number of new endpoints, including mainframe control, as well as updates for existing endpoints. This release also introduces versioning for the masking API, allowing our customers to upgrade without risk of breaking their integrations.

  • AdoptOpenJDK 8 for the Delphix Toolkit: Delphix has changed the Java Development Kit (JDK) that is included with the toolkit, and is sent to all Delphix connected environments. Customers who require using Oracle Java may continue to do so with the feature to provide their own Java, which shipped in 5.3.5.

  • Removed Instance Check: When running in AWS or Azure, the product will no longer raise a fault when it detects that it is running on an unsupported instance. This enables Delphix to certify previously released software on new instances without having to modify the software.
    The product will still detect what instance it is running on and include this information in the user interface and phone home bundles. We will also continue to publish a matrix of supported instances for Azure, AWS, and GCP in the product documentation. Delphix provides no guarantee of performance or support for unsupported instance types.

  • Upgrade Process: The upgrade to 6.0 will be an in-place upgrade like other Delphix releases, there are a few changes that will improve the process overall for 6.0:

    • We will require an upgrade to an interim release first (either 5.3.6). This can be done at the same time as the customer upgrades to 6.0 or in the months prior.

    • We will be introducing new upgrade checks to ensure that customers are not using features that have been removed. For a list of removed features see Deprecated and Removed Features.

    • We will provide an upgrade image specific for each platform we support with Virtualization (VMWare, AWS, Azure, GCP). This will allow us to be more precise in customizing the images for each.