Enterprise Test Data & Privacy Automation
Ark unifies privacy classification, intelligent masking, relational subsetting, and ephemeral test environments into one automated platform. Empower developers with realistic data while guaranteeing sensitive data never leaves your VPC.
Read-only credentials or a replica — never write access to primary production.
Platform
Classify -> Mask -> Subset -> Provision
Deployment
SaaS orchestration, in-network execution
Outcome
Prepared test databases that stay aligned with production change
Entry points
Ark creates value before a full rollout. Different teams can enter from the same platform using the workflow they already own.
Engineering and QA
Provision relational, production-like databases through automated configs that are fast enough for CI and faithful enough for debugging.
Security and privacy
Classify sensitive fields, enforce masking, and keep reviews current as database changes introduce new risk.
Platform and DevOps
Standardize how teams request prepared environments so lower-environment data stops depending on manual tickets, slow dumps, and stale configs.
Supported source databases
Ark ships with first-class PostgreSQL and MySQL support today. We only list engines that are available in production.
Additional engines are on the roadmap — ask us if yours is a priority.
Direct Contrast
The challenge isn't just copying data—it is managing privacy compliance, schema drift, high operational overhead, and delivering realistic test data reliably.
Each team solves test data differently with disjointed tools, incomplete masking, and tribal knowledge that breaks with every schema change.
Database changes quietly invalidate masking rules, classifications, and prepared environments unless someone notices and repairs the flow by hand.
Engineering wants speed, security wants control, and platform teams are left connecting separate tools without one configurable system of record.
Define how classification, masking, subsetting, and environment delivery should work once, then reuse the same approved flow across teams and pipelines.
Track schema changes, re-run classification where needed, and keep masking logic current as production databases evolve.
The control plane standardizes policy and job handling while the VPC agent runs the data work where your systems already live.
Feature Catalog
Ark connects the teams that request test data, the teams that protect it, and the teams that keep workflows current as databases change.
Slice large databases while maintaining foreign key relationships so tests never crash on missing relations.
Model reusable domain slices such as Customer, Order, or Claim with a root table, parameterized filters, table roles, virtual relationships, and versioned definitions.
Apply version-pinned, parameterized SQL fixtures after subsetting or provisioning so every test environment starts with the exact states your test suite expects.
Seamlessly trigger masked ephemeral test databases directly in your CI/CD pipeline or local developer shell.
Programmatically automate test data provisioning directly inside internal platforms or custom developer portals.
Spin up temporary Postgres, MySQL, or Mongo targets using local containers and populate them with safe subsets.
Freeze approved masked baselines once, then reuse them as fast copy-on-write clones for repeatable QA, CI, and demo environments.
Developer Workflow
Start with ark-cli for fast operator execution, then use Go or JavaScript SDKs when provisioning belongs inside platform code, test harnesses, or internal tools.
# authenticate onceark-cli login \ --api-url "https://control.ark.dev" \ --api-key "$ARK_API_KEY" \ --tenant-id "$ARK_TENANT_ID" # inspect available source configsark-cli configs list # provision a masked ephemeral databaseark-cli testenvs create \ --config "550e8400-e29b-41d4-a716-446655440000" \ --waitProduct Proof
The UI is not a demo shell. It is where teams review classifications, approve masking policy, track jobs, and manage prepared environments.
Security Architecture
Ark keeps orchestration centralized while execution stays close to the source data inside your environment.
Orchestration loop
Our SaaS never sees your actual row-level data. Only schema metadata and job statuses are tracked.
Runs as a stateless container in your VPC. No inbound ports required; no persistent data storage.
Connect the agent with a read-only database user, or point it at a production replica instead of the primary. Ark only needs SELECT-level access to build subsets — write access to production is never required.
Why Ark
Ark reduces manual handling, tightens data boundaries, and gives mixed technical teams a repeatable, drift-aware way to prepare non-production data.
Move away from raw production copies in shared lower environments. Ark identifies sensitive fields, applies masking, and keeps the riskiest handling steps out of manual workflows.
Give engineers relational, production-like datasets ready for CI, QA, and debugging in minutes—completely safe and automated.
Map discovered data into governance workflows so privacy and security teams can review what matters without reconstructing context from fragmented logs, tickets, and spreadsheets.
The control plane orchestrates jobs, but the agent runs classification, masking, and subsetting inside your network boundary.
Ark's classification pipeline can run with local models so teams can use automation while keeping sensitive context under their own control.
Job history, approvals, configuration changes, and drift-triggered updates are visible in one place, making reviews and incident follow-up simpler.
What changes after rollout
Ark helps teams move faster with realistic data, while keeping privacy controls part of the delivery path instead of a cleanup step.
Knowledge Base & FAQ
Key answers on how Subsetra Ark automates relational subsetting, in-VPC masking, and ephemeral test databases.
Test Data Management (TDM) is the discipline of creating, masking, subsetting, and provisioning realistic database environments for testing and CI/CD pipelines. Subsetra Ark modernizes TDM by running a lightweight, outbound-only agent inside the customer VPC. This eliminates the need to upload sensitive production data to third-party clouds or endure multi-hour database restore delays, enabling developers to spin up secure, masked, production-like test databases in seconds.
Subsetra Ark separates control plane metadata from data plane execution. The ark-agent runs entirely inside your private VPC/network, performing discovery, masking, subsetting, and sandbox provisioning locally. The agent connects to the control plane via an outbound-only mTLS gRPC tunnel — raw database rows, credentials, and customer data never leave your firewall.
Ark uses a graph-based relational subsetting engine that automatically traces foreign key relationships, handles circular/cyclic dependencies, and supports composite keys. When subsetting by root business entities (e.g. active users or specific tenants), Ark guarantees that all related parent and child rows are included without breaking constraints.
Using the ark-cli command-line tool (e.g. `ark-cli testenvs create --config <ID> --wait`) or native Go and JavaScript/TypeScript SDKs, CI/CD pipelines can provision pre-masked ephemeral database containers on demand, run integration tests against a realistic DSN, and automatically destroy the sandbox via TTL expiration.
Legacy TDM platforms (such as Delphix, Informatica, IBM Optim) require heavy infrastructure, long rollout cycles, and complex manual scripts. Subsetra Ark provides a modern, developer-first alternative: a single Go binary agent, continuous schema drift reclassification, deterministic scenario fixtures, and instant copy-on-write data virtualization.
Deployment Ready
Start with one source, one approved config, and one ready sandbox. Then expand the workflow across CI, QA, and internal engineering use cases.
Enterprise-Grade Security & Compliance
Ark operates 100% inside your secure VPC. Your actual row-level data never leaves your private network perimeter.