SQLBits 2019

Environment Provisioning: The Third Age

Step back through the ages and explore how database teams have approached creating environments for dev and test. Learn how, in the new age of provisioning, databases are delivered safer, faster, and more efficiently

First, we were hunters. Creating and refreshing environments for dev/test/UAT by “hitting it ‘til it works”. Running a restore job using the SSMS wizard. Then running it again from T-SQL after adding the WITH MOVE option to reflect the different disk layout. Then yet again after freeing up some diskspace.

That was the first age of environment provisioning.

Some of us moved onto rubbing sticks together; putting the script into a SQLAgent job, scripting out the permissions and sticking our sledgehammer masking techniques in as a job step. We gathered up our jobs, which often failed and took too long but that was the way things were. Nobody had told us about the schema change, or the tiny diskspace we were trying to land in.

We were pleased to be hunter-gatherers.

In this session, we discover the third age of environment provisioners. The farmers. Developers, analysts and others can self-serve, through repeatable, and audited processes. In today’s age, masking desensitizes environments to mitigate against breaches and ensure compliance, while enabling developers and testers to work with realistic data. Whole environments are delivered at scale with databases customized to their specific security needs.

Learn how you can join the farmers!