I don’t usually create a post just for new Delphix Dynamic Platform releases, especially minor releases, but this one does deserve some air time.
Over the years that I’ve worked with the platform there has been many feature enhancements on each new release, whether major or minor. The engineering and development teams at Delphix obviously work tirelessly to improve the product to meet customer requests and the latest (minor) release proves that.
There are four particular updates in the upcoming 6.0.2 release that I’m going to highlight, purely because they’ve been on my list of enhancements I’d like to see for a long time. I know for a fact that the customers I support will quickly upgrade to this release for some if not all of these updates.
Support for DB2 DPF
Although DB2 on *nix has been long supported, the lack of support for Database Partition Feature (DPF) has meant many larger complex applications, who have a keen desire to use Delphix, have been just left in the onboarding queue. Now I expect a glut of DB2 systems moving to Delphix to experience all that Dynamic Platform goodness.
Windows Authentication for SQL Server
One of my key responsibilities early on in my Delphix career was to pass the software through a large financial services customers security processes and have it approved as an enterprise technology for consumption around the business. That was a few years ago and the biggest hurdles were the requirements of the platform for accounts and privileges, and specifically the use of database authentication for SQL Server.
Well, now that security doc can be updated with db auth removed and the dispensation thrown in the bin. A welcome change for the security folks.
Smart Failover
Delphix replication can be used for various use cases, not least for disaster recovery but also for distributed environments and migration. One gotcha that you always need to be aware of occurs when activating the replicated objects where you can encounter name conflicts. Up until now, you would have to plan ahead for conflicts or deal with them during failover, which is when you least want to be thinking of that stuff.
Smart failover is a new feature that automates object conflict resolution, which will be one less thing to think about when you are in a state of controlled panic during a DR scenario.
Support Bundles not Required for Upgrade
And finally, I’ve upgraded countless Delphix engines. It has always been a joint process between the Delphix admin (me) and Delphix Support. On the one hand, it adds steps to the process lengthening the procedure, especially when there’s tens of engines to upgrade. On the other hand you get to know the support guys and girls quite well and they’re all a good bunch of people and worthy of a chat about anything you like!
Well now we’ll spend less time chatting about the weekends football scores or the latest geeky API endpoints and just get on with the upgrade ourselves. Of course Support will always be there to help should we need it.
There are other updates in this release I haven’t mentioned (environment sync support for masking is another interesting one) so here’s a link to the pre-release data sheet for you to check out.
Matt is a technology consultant with over 20 years experience helping organisations around the world achieve data success using proven and emerging technologies. He is the Principal Consultant and Head Trainer at Kuzo Data.
Connect with Matt on LinkedIn.