DevOps with Database Containers

Windocks offers container technology for SQL Server Windows and Azure SQL. These containers are isolated SQL Servers running on a single machine on different ports and can be created and removed quickly. They are available for SQL Server 2008, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, and 2022 - Express, Developer, Standard, and Enterprise.

100% Windows Native

Windocks SQL Server containers are an independent port by Windocks of Docker's container technology. Unlike Linux SQL Server containers, Windocks SQL Server containers support native Windows authentication. All SQL services are supported including Agent, Analysis (SSAS), reporting (SSRS) and integration (SSIS).

Database cloning (also known as database virtualization) is the technology that creates instantaneous writeable copies of databases without using additional storage, no matter how big the data. Windocks provides database cloning technology based on standard Linux and Windows file systems with support for SQL Server, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

Windocks database refresh brings over incremental changes in production to database clones, enabling dev, test, and AI/ML data scientists to work with current production data without the overhead of restoring full production backups. Incremental refresh is supported for both SQL Server and Oracle and is critical for large databases.

Windocks provides access controls based on Windocks groups, Active Directory groups or secrets in vaults such as Azure Vault, Amazon Secrets manager and more. Simply specify the access controls in the image specification along with the details of the databases and masking. Windocks orchestration will do the work in enforcing the access controls.

Data masking

Windocks offers a built-in database masking solution that discovers and obfuscates sensitive data in SQL Server and Oracle databases. Use a single UI tool to discover sensitive data, classify, and build masks. Windocks masking is deterministic, retains field formats, and can preserve parts of fields for masking.

Synthetic data

For maximum privacy protection beyond data masking, Windocks can generate synthetic data that maintains the statistical distributions of your production SQL data. The plug-in architecture enables you to use built-in synthetic data generation (based on MIT's Synthetic Data Vault - SDV), Microsoft AI Lab's Synthetic Data Showcase - SDS, or your own custom Python code to model and validate your synthetic data sets.

Windocks database orchestration is a supervisory database control plane that co-ordinates database cloning, containerization, periodic production refresh, access control, masking, synthetic data generation, and script repositories to customize and deliver complete database environments.

The Windocks data repo is a repository of images of all complete database environments ready to be cloned and delivered as containers. Images are versioned to track different customizations for different use cases and different versions of production data by dates. Each image in the data repo consists of one or more databases with all the rules built in for masking, applying database scripts, security and more. The data repo enables databases to be first class artifacts that are auditable.

Windocks images can be built from production SQL data by restoring SQL Server backups or files, Azure SQL BACPACs, Idera SQLSafe Backup files, AWS RDS backups, Oracle backups or files, and PostgreSQL / MySQL dumps. In addition, Windocks can source images from a SAN system snapshot by integrating with APIs from Cohesity, Pure Storage, NetApp, and other storage arrays. Windocks will create database clones instantaneously from the image no matter how big the database.

WIndocks for Linux works with the common Linux docker implementation to perform database orchestration using standard Linux database containers. Windocks database orchestration will create the containers, clone production data, refresh from production periodically, mask sensitive information, and deliver running Linux containers with complete database environments for Oracle, mySQL, and PostgreSQL.

All Windocks services are accessed via a built-in web application, a REST API or a command line. Docker clients, Kubectl commands, Helm charts or UI are supported.