2+ years into the Delphix Data Virtualization and Data Masking Journey and things are good!
June 16, 2020

2+ years into the Delphix Data Virtualization and Data Masking Journey and things are good!

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Delphix

We use Delphix to increase development velocity by removing data friction by speeding up database refresh times from days to minutes, lowering storage cost, while creating a secure data set. Delphix is easy to use in tools like Jenkins to setup automated regression testing. Delphix allows you to push test data management capabilities to the developer/tester empowering them to be their own data operator to bookmark, rewind, refresh data as needed.
  • Fast refresh of production data to non-production environments.
  • Easy to automate tasks in Delphix (Bookmark, Rewind, Refresh, etc.) and build pipelines in tools like Jenkins. Enables CI/CD push button build of new virtual database and also the ability to automate regression testing scenarios as well as provide a simple way to expose self-service to developers & testers.
  • The staff at Delphix are knowledgeable and take a genuine interest in helping their customers succeed. The support organization is among the best I've seen.
  • Delphix is good at notifying customers of bugs & features striking a good balance on sending the right amount and type of communication.
  • Delphix is always improving the product and fixing any bugs quickly and transparently.
  • Delphix Data Masking product works as described and allows for multiple streams of masking concurrently to complete masking faster.
  • User/PWD management in the Delphix Self-Service web page does not support LDAP nor AD security groups. This creates a hassle if you have a large number of self-service users to create and maintain passwords for. The fix for this is supposed to be the new Central Management tool. We just ended up creating jobs in Jenkins (which supports groups) using the python-examples scripts from the Delphix Github.
  • Reporting on storage and performing capacity planning is not easy when running many (20+) virtual databases. The latest release and new Central Management tool are both supposed to storage reporting much better.
  • Delphix Data Masking tool could handle masking of complex flat files better. We ended up creating a tagger and un-tagger to add/remove metadata to enable Delphix masking to be able to mask our complex flat file. Would have been nice if that capability was already built into the masking tool.
  • The ROI has been positive reducing db refresh from 4 days to 4 minutes, putting data operations in the hands of the developer/tester, all while removing the myriad of steps of a prod/non-prod refresh is in line with Agile philosophy of removing waste and moving the work closer to people that need to do it (the developers)!
  • ROI is easier to obtain if you are already an Agile development shop and can take advantage of automating Delphix functions shortly after install.
  • The hard dollar savings comes from reduced storage costs and requires refreshing dev/test dbs regularly (i.e. every 3 months or more often) to realize the benefit.
There are many first generation test data management tools that use SQL scripts behind the scenes to create small subsets of data for testing of functional subjects within the database (i.e. Claims or Membership, etc.). Delphix differs by operating at the data block level on disk, sitting between the db engine (Oracle, SQL, etc.) and the physical storage. This allows Delphix to provide full size virtual databases for the cost of not much more than enough storage for a single prod sized copy. Intelligent block sharing also enables full db refreshes and rewinds in minutes, not hours or days, all without having to maintain any schema relationship information which is required in first-gen TDM tools.
Delphix does not perform any SQL functions so its not for extract, transform, load or creating smaller subset databases. We figured why subset the data if we can get a full virtual copy for no additional cost!
The Delphix support organization is one of the best vendor technology support groups I have ever worked with. We use the premier support model currently and get fast, knowledgeable help and the Customer Success Director helps us find answers to questions on best practices and topics that traditionally fall outside of support.

Do you think Delphix delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Delphix's feature set?

Yes

Did Delphix live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Delphix go as expected?

No

Would you buy Delphix again?

Yes

Delphix is well suited for development and/or testing teams who want to eliminate the wait time for receiving data from production (i.e. non-prod refreshes). Delphix can reduce the time prod refreshes take from days to minutes. Delphix virtualization is also strong for providing the ability to set a bookmark, make data changes/compare results, and rewind to the bookmark enabling automated regression testing. The Delphix Data Masking product works as advertised and is a customizable.
From an licensing perspective Delphix has a 3TB minimum so its better suited to enterprise sized databases, the ROI may go down if the db size is small, number of dev/test dbs is small, and/or number of developers and testers is small. If you don't refresh from Prod frequently your storage usage will climb which offsets some of the hard dollar cost benefit.