File Library

Tim Gorman, Delphix

How much testing do you perform in your BI/DW environments? Do you even have a test environment? Do you test in production?

The biggest problem with testing in BI and DW environments is the size and velocity of data. Databases and applications have grown enormous and complex. "Storage is cheap" is simply not true. Need proof? Ask for 10 TB to provision a new test environment.

Provisioning a full environment for each developer or tester on each task of each project appears unrealistic, when each might require several terabytes or even petabytes of storage. And so everyone is limited to working in a small handful of shared environments that are refreshed only every few months, if ever, and both code quality and data quality suffer.

Data virtualization is the solution. Using thin-provisioning technologies, virtual databases and file systems only consume space from changed blocks, so it is possible to provision virtual terabytes for only a few actual megabytes. Coders and testers have full and independent read-write environments provided quickly in which to develop and test, improving code quality. Learn about the technical details behind this solution.

When I first heard about data virtualization, it sounded far-fetched, just a trick. Instead, it is the perfect solution to the perfect storm of more data quickly. Every IT shop will need to know how to provision test environments faster using less storage. It's not a matter of "if," but "when."