Re: Developers wanting individual Unit Test (no data) databases - suggestions?

 >> Commvault, Delphix, Actifio and Veeam will produce a full copy of a database, literally in minutes.
 >> However, that will still will be a full copy of your database, which you cannot squeeze to a 10GB format
 >> and deliver to your developers.

This indicates a basic misunderstanding of "virtual" datasets.

It is impossible to "produce a full copy of a database, literally in minutes", as the laws of physics surrounding the movement of data have not changed. It takes time to read data from storage media, it takes time to transmit data, it takes time to write data to storage media. If cloning 10 TB means moving 10 TB, then it will take hours, not minutes.

I won't presume to speak for CommVault, Actifio, or Veeam because I don't know how they work, but Delphix provisions full independent *virtual* copies that are *projected* from the storage appliance to database servers using network-attached storage (NAS), without consuming any storage locally mounted on those database servers. Optionally, ORACLE_HOME and application files can be virtualized as well, allowing servers with only OS onboard to run databases and full application stacks.

There is a different capability to "export" (or "re-hydrate") datasets from virtual to physical format if desired, but of course this takes time and requires a full set of storage on the target database server.

There is nothing to "squeeze" and virtual databases are easily delivered, as many as you like. That's the whole point.

On 8/13/17 19:37, Mladen Gogala wrote:
>
> On 08/11/2017 01:25 PM, Chris Taylor wrote:
>
>> We've got a relatively large development group who want to have many
>> Unit Test databases (without data) that they can spin up on demand
>> and destroy when done.
>>
>> I'm curious what products are available that could facilitate
>> something like this?
>>
>> I was thinking something like this:
>>
>> Unit Test (UT Master) - code replicated from production nightly
>> (never used for testing)
>>
>> How could I facilitate users creating a copy on demand of UTMaster
>> using something like:
>>
>> VMWare or
>> Delphix or
>> Docker or
>> something
>>
>> I'm basically looking to see what options are to accomplish something
>> like this.
>>
>> I was thinking if we stood up UT Master on a VM, we could snap the VM
>> into another copy for a specific developer on demand.
>>
>> Chris
>
> I would add Commvault to the above list. Commvault is a comprehensive
> backup suite which can create on demand databases using either storage
> snapshots or our own block level backup technology. However, if you
> don't want to procreate TB sized databases on demand, there is a very
> nice utility called DataBee which follows the foreign keys and creates
> a consistent database subset. The utility is from a UK company called
> Net 2000. Here is more info: http://www.net2000ltd.com/DataBee.html
>
> Commvault, Delphix, Actifio and Veeam will produce a full copy of a
> database, literally in minutes. However, that will still will be a
> full copy of your database, which you cannot squeeze to a 10GB format
> and deliver to your developers.
> You can also try with Amazon S3 which also supports snapshots and
> cloning. Delivery is in, that case, very simple. Oracle cloud can do
> that, too.
>
> --
> Mladen Gogala
> Oracle DBA

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