Cohesity has entered the copy data management market, farming out space-efficient clones of data sets to developers from its backup store.
The idea is to stop developers having to request data copies from the IT department and then neglecting to manually delete used copies that are no longer needed.
The use of copy data management (CDM) software to combat copy data sprawl was pioneered by Actifio and Delphix in 2012 and 2013. They provided virtual copies of master data for used by app development testers and others. Copies are managed and deleted when no longer needed so that storage of multiple redundant copies of data is stopped in its tracks.
Cohesity’s new software is called Agile Development and Test (ADaT) and it makes zero-cost clones (virtual copies) of database backups stored in Cohesity’s Data Platform. These can be created in a self-service fashion by authorised developers who use such virtual instances to test their application code.
Copy data is scanned to detect and mask personally identifiable information such as social security and credit card numbers. Cohesity claims the resulting smaller number of copies reduces customerexposure to security attacks and also lowers overall storage costs.
The main benefit though is on-demand access to up-to-date test data by developers. Hence the product name.
Other copy data management suppliers and offerings include;
CloudSpin vs Agile Development and Test
Cohesity had an earlier CloudSpin product punting data from its Data Platform to test and dev people. We are told by Cohesity that Agile Development and Test is a very different set of capabilities to CloudSpin.
CloudSpin is aimed at hybrid cloud mobility – take an on-premises workload and spin it up in the cloud) – and the use cases are app migration to cloud, test and dev in cloud, and DR to cloud.
Agile Dev and Test is specifically focused on Database backups (Oracle, SQL Server, etc.) and seamlessly extending these backups for development and testing use cases.
ADaT is subscription-based and will be available in the fourth quarter. The self-service capability is currently beta and data masking will be available in the coming quarters.
