Glossary
IT infrastructure glossary
Short, plain definitions of the words that come up in our reports and tools. Where a tool can put a number on a term, the term links to it.
- 3-2-1-1-0 rule
- Three copies of the data, on two kinds of media, one of them offsite, one offline or immutable, and zero errors in the last restore test.
- Backup and restore time calculator
- Availability
- The share of time a service works as intended, usually written as a percentage such as 99.9%.
- Uptime and SLA calculator
- Cashier
- The part of a gaming platform where players deposit and withdraw, with its payment methods, limits and approval rules.
- Platform migration checklist
- Cluster
- Two or more servers that can take over each other's virtual machines when one fails. It only helps if the survivors have enough spare capacity.
- Uptime and SLA calculator
- Cutover
- The planned moment when live operation moves from an old system to a new one.
- Platform migration checklist
- Deduplication
- Storing a block of data once even when it appears in many files or backups, which reduces storage and transfer.
- Backup and restore time calculator
- Four eyes rule
- A control where a sensitive action, such as approving a large withdrawal, needs a second person.
- Platform migration checklist
- Hot spare
- A drive installed in an array but left unused, so a rebuild can start automatically when another drive fails.
- RAID calculator
- Hypervisor
- The software that runs virtual machines on a physical server, such as VMware ESXi, Proxmox VE or Hyper-V.
- Uptime and SLA calculator
- Immutable backup
- A backup that cannot be changed or deleted until its retention period ends, even with administrator rights.
- Backup and restore time calculator
- KYC
- Know your customer: checking a player's identity, age and address, and keeping the evidence.
- Platform migration checklist
- MFA
- Multi factor authentication: a password plus a second proof, such as an app code or a hardware key.
- Infrastructure check
- Parity
- Extra data calculated from the data blocks in a stripe, used to rebuild a failed drive.
- RAID calculator
- PSP
- Payment service provider: the company that processes card, bank or wallet payments for a merchant.
- Platform migration checklist
- RAID
- A way of combining drives so the array survives a failed drive, gets faster, or both. Not a backup: deleted or encrypted files are gone from every drive at once.
- RAID calculator
- RAIDZ
- The ZFS equivalent of parity RAID. RAIDZ1, RAIDZ2 and RAIDZ3 survive one, two and three failed drives.
- RAID calculator
- Rebuild
- Recreating a failed drive's contents on a new drive. The array is more exposed until it finishes.
- RAID calculator
- Reconciliation
- Matching two sets of figures, such as platform balances against payment provider statements, and explaining every difference.
- Platform migration checklist
- Restore test
- Actually restoring data from a backup and timing it. The only proof that a backup works.
- Backup and restore time calculator
- RPO
- Recovery point objective: how much data, measured in time, you can afford to lose. Backups every 24 hours mean up to 24 hours of work can be lost.
- Backup and restore time calculator
- RTO
- Recovery time objective: how long a system can be down before the damage is unacceptable.
- Backup and restore time calculator
- SAN
- Storage area network: shared block storage that several servers use as if it were a local disk.
- RAID calculator
- Self exclusion
- A player's request to be blocked from gambling for a set period or permanently. It has to survive any platform change without a gap.
- Platform migration checklist
- Single point of failure
- A component whose failure alone stops the service, such as a single switch or a single power feed.
- Uptime and SLA calculator
- SLA
- Service level agreement: the availability and response times a provider commits to, and what happens if it misses them.
- Uptime and SLA calculator
- Snapshot
- A point in time view of a disk or virtual machine, kept on the same storage. Useful for quick rollbacks, but it is lost with the storage, so it does not replace a backup.
- Backup and restore time calculator
- UPS
- Uninterruptible power supply: a unit with batteries that keeps equipment running through short power cuts and allows a clean shutdown in long ones.
- UPS runtime calculator
- VA and W
- Two ratings on a UPS. Watts (W) are the real power it can deliver. Volt amperes (VA) are apparent power, and W = VA × power factor. Size by watts, then check the VA rating.
- UPS runtime calculator
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