Windocks

Windocks serves virtualised copies (clones) of databases for the purposes of testing, either within a Docker container or for a standard database instance. The former is one of the major selling points of the platform, and enables a clear path to Kubernetes based test pipelines. Virtualisation in Windocks can either be delivered via storage volumes or Windows Virtual Hard Drives (popular for removing storage dependencies) and in either case creates and delivers clones in seconds. Moreover, the ability to choose between the two methods is, to the best of our knowledge, unique within the TDM space.

Fig 1 - Windocks test data repository architecture

The platform is primarily accessed through a web UI that abstracts out many of the complexities of managing Docker containers. Accordingly, manual coding and configuration is kept to an absolute minimum. In fact, only very simple configuration files (Dockerfiles, specifically) are required to build your Docker images. Image builds are one-step processes that can include data subsetting, masking, and synthetic data generation. The result is a versioned, test-ready database repository, the architecture of which is shown in Figure 1. Integration with source control (Git, for instance) is also built in as part of this single step. No staging server is needed at any point. The platform also supports incremental image updates, meaning that you can keep your database clones up to date whenever the underlying data changes without needing to completely rebuild and redeploy them.

That said, the web UI is not the only way to interact with Windocks. It also offers a CLI (Command Line Interface) for use by developers (and other more technical users) as well a restful API.  In particular, it provides an open interface that is accessible to other products, notably the company’s partners, to add additional functionality to the build process as noted above. REST APIs are also provided to integrate outgoing images with various CI/CD pipelines, source control, and orchestration systems, such as Jenkins and Azure DevOps.

Database virtualisation is increasingly in-demand within the TDM space, and it’s not difficult to see why: it allows for extremely fast provisioning of entire (virtual) databases for the purposes of testing without needing to worry about whether they are representative (as would be the case for subsets or synthetic data). Moreover, it allows each tester (or developer, for that matter) to rapidly provision their own data sets that they can play around with and modify as they wish without negatively impacting anyone else.

Containers are also increasingly in-demand, not just in regards to TDM but in general. Moreover, database virtualisation and containers form a natural fit: database clones are usually created, delivered, and torn down repeatedly and en masse, a lifecycle that is well suited to (and enhanced by) deployment as a container. To put a point on it, Docker is able to deliver virtual database instances in less than 30 seconds and supports up to 100 containers per virtual machine. In other word, it helps to maximise both speed and utilisation. It then almost goes without saying that Windocks, a platform that combines these two technologies, should not be dismissed lightly. To add to this, Windocks claims that its customers have been able to reduce lower-level database environment costs by up to 50% by utilising fewer VMs and minimising storage consumption. This stands in contrast to the other vendors in the space that primarily offer database virtualisation as part of a server/client architecture and hence cannot easily reap the benefits of containerisation.

The product’s integrations and partnerships, together with the open platform it offers, are also a significant strength. Partnerships, in particular, allow it to work in concert with other TDM products to create a complete solution that offers a combination of database virtualisation, containerisation, data masking, data subsetting, and synthetic data generation.

In addition, the product is highly portable and offers an extremely fast time to return. Its web UI is perhaps a little plain, but it is certainly functional, and can be subsumed by other front-ends (for examples, the ones offered by Windocks’ partners) if necessary. What’s more, compared to the other database virtualisation tools we are aware of in the TDM space, it is either significantly more widely applicable or vastly more cost effective.

The Bottom Line

Windocks is an effective database virtualisation product that poses a compelling alternative to the, at present, more prominent players in that space. It really shines, however, when paired with other TDM products: with its partners, Windocks is capable of contributing to a comprehensive and best-of-breed TDM solution.