Continuous Data for PaaS

Overview

Continuous Data for PaaS (CD4P) enables organizations to orchestrate the delivery of safe, masked data across cloud PaaS database environments — without requiring Delphix virtualization engines. DCT communicates directly with cloud provider APIs to discover, manage, snapshot, provision, and refresh PaaS databases as part of a structured data delivery workflow.

The platforms available for CD4P are determined by the PaaS Data Connectors installed in DCT. Currently supported platforms include:

  • AWS RDS Oracle (Multi-Tenant)

  • AWS RDS PostgreSQL

  • Azure SQL Managed Instance

CD4P does not use Delphix storage virtualization. Operations are orchestrated through native cloud provider APIs. All managed resources must reside within the same cloud region — cross-region operations are not supported.

How this helps

CD4P is the ideal solution in use-cases where:

  • Your organization needs to automate the delivery of masked, safe data to downstream development and testing environments, and the databases involved are cloud-native PaaS databases.

  • Your organization uses Delphix for traditional virtualized datasets and also has cloud PaaS databases that need the same data delivery workflows — CD4P extends that coverage to the cloud PaaS side.

  • Greenfield applications use cloud databases that do not yet require full data virtualization, but your organization still needs centralized self-service data delivery, access control, and audit trails.

How this works

CD4P mirrors the standard Continuous Data workflow: sensitive production data flows through a masking step and is then made available as a curated, safe dataset for downstream non-production environments. The key difference is that all operations use native cloud APIs instead of Delphix virtualization.

The high-level workflow is:

  1. Create a Cloud Account in DCT, providing cloud credentials and region. DCT auto-discovers all PaaS Instances and PaaS DBs.

  2. Identify the production database as a Root Source.

  3. Provision a temporary golden copy from the production source for masking.

  4. Profile and mask the golden copy using Continuous Compliance.

  5. Create a Bookmark on the masked golden copy to mark it as a trusted, validated dataset.

  6. Deprovision the golden copy to reclaim compute resources while preserving its timeline.

  7. Provision downstream non-production databases from the masked Bookmark.

  8. Self-service users refresh, rewind, and share the non-production databases independently.

Relationship to traditional Continuous Data

CD4P is designed to be familiar to existing Continuous Data users. The core concepts — sources, datasets, timelines, bookmarks, and self-service workflows — are intentionally aligned with traditional Continuous Data patterns.

For a full mapping of traditional Continuous Data operations to their CD4P equivalents, see the CD4P concepts section in the DCT concepts topic.

Considerations

  • All resources must be in the same cloud region. Cross-region provisioning and sharing are not supported.

  • AWS RDS Oracle manages the entire instance (including all PDBs) as a single unit. Individual PDB-level operations are not supported in this release.

  • PaaS DBs are not yet supported within VDB Groups or unified policy assignments alongside virtualized datasets.

  • Compliance profiling and masking still require a connected Continuous Compliance engine.