DEVOPSdigest

As DevOps scales through organizations, the database is increasingly being included as a natural part of the development process. As a consequence, more developers in more teams want copies of the database to test their changes against, and Redgate Software has upgraded its database provisioning solution, SQL Clone, to give teams faster, easier access to the copies they need.

SQL Clone uses the virtualization technologies built into the Windows OS to create database copies, or clones, which are a fraction of the size of the original – typically 40MB for a 1TB database. The clones can be provisioned in seconds to developers and, despite their small footprint, look, behave and work just like the original.

Different teams, however, will have varying requirements, based on the type of data inside the database copies, its level of sensitivity, and regulations like the GDPR, CCPA and HIPAA which need to be complied with.

The new Teams feature in SQL Clone 4 directly addresses this issue by allowing Database Administrators (DBAs) and Data Architects to have more control over the instances, images and clones that developers have access to, enabling safe self-service and delegation for DevOps and CI.

Using Windows Active Directory groups, DBAs can now grant individual teams clearance to view and use specific instances and images and the clones associated with them. Only they will be able to see them and, similarly, they will not have access to the copies in use by other teams.

Importantly, this allows developers working on different projects to be able to self-serve their database copies, and refresh dedicated development environments on-demand. It also fulfils a requirement for DevOps identified by the analyst house, Bloor Research, in a 2019 InBrief: “Timely provisioning of test data – delivering the right test data to the right place at the right time – is an important component of any DevOps pipeline.”

As James Murtagh, Redgate Product Marketing Manager, comments: “With more database environments being created to drive dedicated development and continuous integration pipelines, there’s now a need to provision test data more efficiently. At the same time, though, the question of data privacy has to become business as usual and without the right tooling and approach, it will hamper digital transformation initiatives.”

He goes on to add: “SQL Clone’s new Teams feature enables DevOps teams to self-serve not only safe data, but the precise data related to their particular project. That helps them boost efficiency (it’s what DevOps is all about, after all), and progress DevOps and agile development methods hand-in-hand with privacy regulations.”