Catalogic adds support for SAP HANA and healthcare database programs to ECX. The company is focusing its ECX copy data management software for DevOps use cases.
Copy data management specialist Catalogic Software beefed up its flagship ECX management tool with new support for SAP HANA, InterSystems Caché, Epic Electronic Health Record and physical Microsoft SQL servers.
Previous Catalogic ECX releases concentrated on adding support for leading vendors' storage arrays. Today's launch of Catalogic ECX 2.6 focuses on supporting more database applications. That can allow development projects to be done on the same storage that is used when applications move into production.
Support in ECX 2.6 covers SQL Server 2012, 2014 and 2016 on physical servers (it previously supported SQL on VMware virtual machines), SAP HANA on Linux, and InterSystems Caché database and Epic Electronic Health Record software used on Linux and IBM's AIX operating systems.
Catalogic refers to ECX as "in-place" copy data management (CDM) because it manages snapshot, replication and cloning technologies inside of storage arrays and VMware virtual machines. Catalogic ECX integrates with the data protection technologies of NetApp, IBM, EMC, Pure Storage and Oracle storage arrays. Instead of putting copied data into a separate repository or third-party appliance, it lets customers use their primary arrays for CDM. Catalogic ECX features can be controlled via the ECX RESTful API.
Designed for DevOps
Steve Ricketts, a senior analyst at Taneja Group, said the latest ECX release will help Catalogic target the DevOps market.
"The more databases they support, the larger their addressable market," he said.
The more databases they support, the larger their addressable market.
Steve Rickettssenior analyst, Taneja Group
Rickets said ECX's RESTful API gives developers access to familiar tools. ECX also starts and stops the database when taking snapshots so database administrators are assured they have "snapshot consistent" data copies. The software also does data masking so that confidential data is not shared with others working with copies of that data.
"It also does point-in-time recovery," Rickets said of Catalogic ECX. "And it is integrated with popular database tools like Oracle RMAN. The other advantage they have is [that] customers can leverage their existing storage. Your IT team is already familiar with that device."
Peter Eicher, director of marketing at Catalogic, said the value of copy data management has changed since ECX entered the market in 2013 as part of Syncsort -- before spinning off the product into an independent Catalogic the following year.
"When CDM first came out, the use case was around saving copies," Eicher said. "We think it's [now] flexibility, speed and time to market for the software development market. It's a tool for flexibility rather than 'I saved a few copies.'"
By integrating at the array and application levels, Catalogic ECX can automatically discover any installed database and assemble an index of data copies, including historical access patterns and data lineage.
"We are the management layer that resides on a virtual machine; then we catalog the existing snapshots on the vendor storage," said Ken Barth, CEO of Catalogic. "We are literally a cataloging and workflow engine."
