Revolutionizing Database Virtualization: A Major Retailer Cuts Costs and Boosts Efficiency with Perforce Delphix and PreludeSys
About the client
The client is a leading U.S.-based retail giant with a vast network of stores and a strong e-commerce presence. Known for offering a diverse range of apparel, home goods, and luxury products, s millions of customers nationwide. With a legacy of customer-centric initiatives and large-scale annual events, the client continues to evolve through digital innovation into its retail operations.
Client challenges
The client relies on their Cassandra database to deliver critical product information to multiple downstream applications. They required 130 copies of production data across lower environments to support development and testing. However, this approach led to significant operational inefficiencies and infrastructure costs; challenges included:
- Time-consuming Data Loads: Each database copy required four hours to load, limiting refreshes to 6–10 environments per day while making them unavailable.
- High Infrastructure Costs: Maintaining 130 full-sized database copies led to excessive storage and computing expenses.
- Operational Bottlenecks: Development teams faced delays waiting for fresh data, which slowed release cycles and increased dependence on the operations team.
Solution
PreludeSys collaborated closely with the client to implement an innovative Cassandra database virtualization solution using the Delphix Continuous Data Cassandra plugin. Over a span of three months, the team successfully transformed the database management approach through the following steps:
- Staging Push Ingestion Model: A single Cassandra cluster now acts as the source, eliminating the need for multiple physical copies.
- Virtual Databases (VDBs): All lower environment instances were converted into VDBs, allowing for rapid provisioning and minimal storage usage.
- Delphix Self-Service Enablement: Empowered development teams with on-demand access to data, eliminating delays and dependencies.
Results at a glance
Benefits
- Rapid data refresh: Environments can now be refreshed in minutes, significantly boosting developer and tester productivity.
- Significant cost savings: VDBs consume only megabytes of storage at provisioning, growing incrementally, and dramatically reducing storage costs compared to physical copies.
- Self-service data management: Developers can now refresh environments independently, ensuring quicker iterations and smoother workflows.
- Advanced data controls: Features like data versioning, rewinds, and bookmarking provide teams with the ability to manage and restore data efficiently—essentially creating a time
Technology
Delphix Continuous Data, Cassandra, Virtual Databases (VDBs), Delphix Self-Service