Cloud Storage Glossary

Glossary of Terms

Ambient Cloud – A cloud solution built on a distributed architecture, in which storage or processing is distributed across a network of storage nodes managed by individual users, but managed centrally by the cloud vendor. Symform is an example of an Ambient Cloud. See also Distributed Cloud.
As-a-Service – Describes a solution or technology that is delivered “as a service” rather than as an on-premise piece of hardware or software. There are many as-a-service or cloud platforms, such as SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, etc.
Archive – The primary or authoritative copy of one’s data, usually specifically stored for potential future use. Backups are a secondary copy of that data, kept on hand to replace the original item.
Backup – Copies of data which can be used to restore the original after data loss. The loss could result from data deletion, corruption, theft, or physical destruction.

Incremental Backup - A backup that contains only those files that have changed since the most recent backup.
Backup Rotation – An approach to backup in which multiple drives or tapes rotate through a schedule of being used in the backup process, kept in storage, and then returned to backup. These media are ideally stored offsite.
Local Backup – A backup that exists on an onsite device. This local backup copy is often used as the source for creating a remote backup.
Remote Backup. A backup that exists at a remote location, and can protect data and businesses against local or regional events such as fires, floods, hurricanes, or earthquakes, which could destroy backups in the region along with everything else.

Backup and Disaster Recovery – The process of backing up data to enable data recovery or restore in the event of a disaster, be it a power outage, human error, or natural disaster. Proper BDR involves a two-tier backup system, with a local backup image combined with an offsite, ideally cloud-based, data backup to protect against local and regional outages. BDR should be part of any disaster recovery or business continuity plan.
Bare-Metal Restore - The process of restoring the capabilities of a device to either that device or another one, from the device’s “bare metal” state. This includes restoration of the operating system, applications, communications, data, accounts, and permissions.
Block – Chunks of source data created during Symform’s backup process, and later recreated during recovery. The source data is copied, encrypted using a unique folder key, and then broken into blocks of up to 64MB. Symform shreds each block into 64 fragments. This set of fragments is augmented with 32 additional fragments. The 96 fragments of each block are then dispersed across the Symform network; during data recovery, a block can be reconstituted from any 64 of these fragments.
Business Continuity – The strategies and processes necessary to ensure that, in the event of a disaster, critical business functions will be available to employees, customers, vendors, and others (such as auditors or regulators), allowing business operations to be recovered or maintained with sufficient ease.
Cloud Computing –The provision of computing–applications, platforms, infrastructure, processing, data storage, and access –as a service rather than as a set of products. Cloud services are accessed via the Internet.
Cloud Storage – Storage that retains data in remote datacenters, which are generally owned and managed by vendors. Consumers of cloud storage require no on-premise hardware and minimal software to leverage the cloud’s storage capacity.
Compliance – The practice of abiding by industry standards, laws, and regulations concerning data security and protection. Key U.S. data protection and privacy compliance requirements are found in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLB), and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). Symform allows its resellers and distributors to comply with the information security aspects of these laws.
Contribution – A core element of Symform’s service that makes it distinct, more effective, and remarkably affordable. Customers join the Symform Cloud Storage Network not just by backing up data, but also by contributing excess local storage on their own devices. This contributed space is used to securely store encrypted, redundant fragments of data from other Symform customers.
Datacenter – A facility used for housing networking equipment, computer systems, applications and data. They are typically constructed with redundant systems and sources for power, bandwidth, environmental controls and security. They are the backbone of many vendors’ Cloud offerings for applications and storage.
Data Seeding – The initial upload of data typically to a cloud based storage or backup solution. Data seeding is dependent upon bandwidth performance and capabilities of the cloud storage solution.
- Turbo Seeding – A Symform feature that provides an alternative to traditional data seeding, resulting in faster and easier seeding.
Deduplication – The elimination of redundant data with a goal of reducing the volume of data that needs to be transmitted for backup, storage and transmission (seeding). Symform deduplicates across multiple seeding sites without decrypting the data.
Disaster Recovery: The plans and processes for recovering after a business disaster. This includes restoring physical infrastructure, application stacks, restoring backed up data and providing secure access to users. Disaster Recovery plans and processes need to be periodically tested and refreshed.
Dispersal – The distribution of encrypted, redundant, self-healing fragments across the Symform Global Cloud Storage Network. This is a key component of Symform’s data protection. The 96 fragments from each 64MB block of data are spread across 96 geographically dispersed nodes. Any given customer’s fragments might be stored across thousands of nodes.
Disruptive Technology – A term used to describe innovations that address a challenge in a new way that disrupts the current market or traditional way solutions work. Cloud computing, and specifically the Symform Cloud Storage Network, are considered disruptive, because of the new way the technology is developed, delivered and consumed.
Distributed Cloud Storage – Involves data storage across a distributed network of storage nodes rather. These nodes are owned by the members of the network, but are managed centrally by a vendor. Symform is the prime example of a distributed cloud.
Encryption – The process of transforming data to make it unreadable except for those who hold the key. Symform encrypts data on the host device. The data remains encrypted in transit to the cloud, while stored and when transmitted back to the restore device. It is only decrypted when at the restore device. Symform uses industry-leading AES-256 encryption.
Fragments – These are an important element of redundancy for Symform. Symform takes encrypted 64MB blocks of copied source data and breaks the blocks further down into 64 fragments. These set of fragments are then augmented with 32 additional fragments. These 96 fragments are then rapidly dispersed across the Symform network. During data recovery, a block can be reconstituted from any 64 of these fragments.
Hybrid Cloud – Is a combination of two or more clouds of different models (Ambient, Public, Private, etc). Is a recommended deployment model, as it leverages existing infrastructure and extends that to other cloud platforms.
Private Cloud – A cloud platform built and managed for a single organization, either by itself or managed by a third party. With a private cloud, the organization typically also manages the infrastructure powering the cloud solution.
Public Cloud – A cloud platform or solution operated for the general public by a vendor. Many public clouds are “community clouds” where they are operated for a specific community or communities with policies and security boundaries around members of the cloud.
RAID – This is an acronym for Redundant Array of Independent Disks, which is an approach to storage that employs multiple disk drives combined into a unit. Data is redundantly stored and distributed across the component disks. RAIDs are referred to by a number (such as RAID 0 or RAID 6) that broadly indicates the level of redundancy or protection offered by that particular device.
RAID 96 – This is Symform’s patented approach to data protection that incorporates significant advances through both redundancy and a massively distributed global network of independent drives. Here the 96 refers to the level of data redundancy and the number of independent sites on which data fragments are stored.
Recovery – see Restore
Recovery Time Objective – The amount of time during which business processes need to be restored in order to avoid unacceptable impacts from a loss of business continuity. The data recovery timeline is often a critical path item for the Recovery Time Objective.
Redundancy – The duplication of data with the intent of increasing the reliability of data durability and recovery. Symform employs both passive and active redundancy. Even our redundancy is redundant. Passive redundancy is provided by Symform’s addition of 32 parity fragments for each set of 64 data fragments from each 64MB block of source data. These 32 fragments ensure that a Symform user’s data to be restored even in the unlikely event of up to 32 separate and simultaneous failures across the 96 sites storing those fragments in the Symform network. Symform provides active redundancy through both its central monitoring functions and the self-healing properties of the fragments. If a fragment is lost or corrupted, it can be regenerated from information stored on the remaining fragments
Restore – The act of replacing lost or damaged original data with backed up data.

Instant Restore – Symform’s capability that permits customers to host a Hot Standby at a secondary location for instant restoration. Symform monitors the host data and copies any changes to the cloud as well as to the Hot Standby.

SAS 70 Type II: The previous standard for evaluating and certifying operational controls at a data center and for a service provider. Also seen as the standard for service provider evaluation for other compliance mandates, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
Statements on Standards for Attestation Engagements No. 16 – (SSAE 16) is the set of enhancements issued by the Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants to Statement on Auditing Standards No. 70: Service Organizations, abbreviated as SAS 70. SSAE 16 provides guidance to service auditors when assessing the internal controls of a service organization and issuing a service auditor’s report. Symform is SSAE 16 compliant.
Seeding – is the process of the initial upload of data to the cloud. During seeding, data is still vulnerable to local or regional disasters. Upload bandwidth speed is typically the key determinant of seeding time duration for any given volume of data.
Turbo Seeding – is Symform’s approach to accelerate seeding and provide greater protection during seeding. Turbo Seeding involves creating an encrypted copy of your data on a second device. Move that device offsite and upload the data in its encrypted state to the Symform Cloud Storage Network. This significantly reduces data risk with an off-site, encrypted, back up copy of your data and a copy in the Symform Storage Network. Turbo Seeding provides upload speeds that are faster than direct seeding from the device that is also providing incremental back up. Any newly created data is backed up incrementally and immediately without waiting for your initial upload to complete
Version/Versioning – A versioning system monitors changes to a file and makes those changes accessible to users of the file. The purpose of this is to provide access to previous versions of the file. This could be all previous versions or based on an administratively limited schedule of previous versions.
Virtualization – Is the creation or use of “virtual” versions of a platform, operating system, storage device or other resources. These virtual partitions or versions typically reside within a single system, such as multiple virtual servers within a single piece of hardware. Virtualization is often related to utility computing, as a new virtual version is often created based on how much capacity or processing is being used by existing systems. Cloud-based virtual machines that replicate actual desktop or server devices are are often part of a disaster recovery or Business Continuity plan.