Online SNIA Dictionary

[Network] 

All of an installation's passive communications elements (e.g., optical fiber, twisted pair, coaxial cable, connectors, splices, etc.) between transmitters and receivers.

[Storage System] 

An enclosure for one or more storage devices. 

A canister is usually designed to mount in a shelf or other enclosure that supplies power, cooling, and I/O interconnect services. It is used to minimize RF emissions and to simplify insertion and removal in multi-device storage subsystems. See shelf.

[Storage System] 

Methods which reduce the consumption of space required to store a data set, such as compression, data deduplication, thin provisioning, and delta snapshots.

RAID 5 and RAID 6 may also be considered as capacity optimizing methods, as they use less space than ordinary mirroring to perform a necessary function: protecting data from storage device failure.

[General] 

The process of optimizing supply of a given resource to satisfy current and future demand for that resource.

Common methods used for capacity planning include tracking, trending, forecasting and scenario planning to predict future demand.

[Network] 

A physical layer data transmission protocol used in some Ethernet networks.

[Data Recovery]  [File System] 

1. [Data Recovery] A list of backed up files, directories, and the locations (media identifiers) of the backup copies.

2. [File System] A persistent data structure used by some file systems to keep track of the files they manage.

[Data Security] 

Acronym for Common Criteria.

[Standards] 

Acronym for Cloud Data Management Interface.

Acronym for Clock and Data Recovery.

[Data Security] 

A data structure signed with a digital signature that is based on a public key and which asserts that the key belongs to a subject identified in the structure.

[Data Security] 

A time-stamped list of certificates, signed by the issuing Certification Authority, that have been revoked by that CA.

The CRL is made available to entities that need to rely on a certificate for authentication.

[Data Security] 

A step in an authentication dialog that must be answered using either a secret or process assumed to be known only by the other party.

A challenge can be as simple as "What's your password?" or as complex as "Send me the result of a retinal scan of your right eye."

[Storage System]  [Computer System] 

1. The electrical circuits that sense or cause the state changes in recording media and convert between those state changes and electrical signals that can be interpreted as data bits.

2. Synonym for I/O interconnect.

The term channel has other meanings in other branches of computer technology. The definitions given here are commonly used when discussing storage and networking. See device channel, I/O interconnect, host I/O bus.

[Data Recovery]  [File System] 

1. [Data Recovery] (noun) The recorded state of an application at an instant of time, including data, in-memory variables, program counter, and all other context that would be required to resume application execution from the recorded state.

2. [File System] (verb) An activity of a file system, such as the High Performance File System, (HPFS) or the Andrew File System (AFS), in which cached metadata (data about the structures of the file system) is periodically written to the file system's permanent store, allowing the file system to maintain consistency if an unexpected stop occurs.

[Hardware] 

Acronym for Cylinder Head Sector.

[File System] 

Acronym for Common Internet File System.

[Data Security] 

A cryptographic system where plaintext is rearranged through transposition and/or substitution under direction of a cryptographic key.

When a cipher is applied to plaintext to produce ciphertext, the process is called encryption. When the cipher is applied to ciphertext to produce plaintext, the process is called decryption.

[Data Security] 

Data that has been encrypted.

See cleartext.

[Fibre Channel] 

A connection-oriented class of Fibre Channel communication service in which the entire data transfer rate of the link between two ports is dedicated for communication between the ports and not used for other purposes. 

Class 1 is also known as dedicated connection service, and is not widely implemented. See intermix.

[Fibre Channel] 

A connectionless Fibre Channel communication service that multiplexes frames to or from one or more N-Ports or NL-Ports. 

Class 3 frames are datagrams, that is they are not explicitly acknowledged, and delivery is on a "best effort" basis.

[Data Security] 

Alternative term for plaintext. Stating that data is in cleartext implies that the data is not scrambled or rearranged, and is in its raw form.

[Computer System]  [General] 

1. An intelligent device or system that requests services from other intelligent devices, systems, or appliances.

   See server.

2. An asymmetric relationship with a second party (a server) in which the client initiates requests and the server responds to those requests.

[Cloud] 

A party trusted conduct independent assessment of cloud services, information system operations, performance and information security of the cloud implementation. [ISO/IEC 17788]

[Cloud] 

A person or organization that uses cloud services. [ISO/IEC 17788]

[Cloud] 

A set of data processing components that can be automatically provisioned by consumers, accessed over a network and that provide secure multitenancy. [ISO/IEC 17788]

[Cloud]  [Data Security] 

Systematic evaluation of a cloud system by assessing how well it conforms to a set of established security criteria. [ISO/IEC 17788]

[Services] 

Synonym for Data storage as a Service. [ISO/IEC 17788]

[Management]  [Network] 

Acronym for Common Management Information Protocol.

[Computer System] 

A bit (binary digit) of an encoded datum.

Sequences of code bits make up symbols, each of which corresponds to a data element (word, byte, or other unit). For an example see 8b/10b encoding.

[Data Recovery] 

Synonym for offline backup.

See hot backup, online backup.

[Data Management] 

Data storage device, system, or service used to store cold data at a cost that is at least an order of magnitude less than the cost of primary storage.

Cold Storage features large capacity, energy saving and long-term data preservation, in order to achieve low-cost rather than performance.

[SCSI] 

A sequence of bytes that defines a single SCSI command.

[Storage System] 

Data that has been written to stable storage.

[Data Management]  [Network] 

An object oriented description of the entities and relationships in a business' management environment maintained by the Distributed Management Task Force.

CIM is divided into a Core Model and Common Models. The Core Model addresses high-level concepts (such as systems and devices), as well as fundamental relationships (such as dependencies). The Common Models describe specific problem domains such as computer system, network, user or device management. The Common Models are subclasses of the Core Model and may also be subclasses of each other.

[Management] 

An OASIS standard language used to define a model over which an OData service acts.

For more information and current state see https://www.odata.org/documentation/.

[Cloud] 

A cloud infrastructure shared by several organizations and supporting a specific community that has shared concerns (e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and compliance considerations).

[General]  [Legal] 

1. The state of being in accordance with a standard, specification, or clearly defined requirements.

2. The state of being in accordance with legal requirements.

The "compliance market" is centered around storage and systems that support the retention and discovery of data as required by law or regulation.

[General] 

Synonym for data compression.

[Data Security] 

An incident that subjects data to unauthorized disclosure, modification, destruction, or loss.

[Computer System] 

Storage Array that contains one or more Computational Storage Engines.

Abbreviated as CSA.

[Computer System] 

A storage element that contains one or more Computational Storage Engines (CSE) and persistent data storage.

Abbreviated as CSD.

[Computer System] 

Specific operations that may be configured and executed by a Computational Storage Engine (CSE).

Abbreviated as CSF.

[Computer System] 

Resource available for a host to provision a Computational Storage Device (CSx) that enables that CSx to be programmed to perform a Computational Storage Function (CSF).

Abbreviated as CSR.

[Data Security] 

Measures and controls that ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information system assets including hardware, software, firmware, and information being processed, stored, and communicated.

[Data Security] 

Malware that is a self-contained program that can propagate itself through data processing systems or computer networks.

[Data Security] 

The property that data cannot be accessed by unauthorized parties.

Confidentiality may be created by the use of encryption or access controls.

[Computer System] 

A condition that occurs when more services have been requested than are able to be delivered.

[iSCSI] 

1. Short form of dedicated connection.

2. A communication path between the initiator and target using a TCP/IP connection.

   In iSCSI, one or more connections make up a session. Connections carry control messages, SCSI commands, parameters, and data within iSCSI PDUs.

[iSCSI] 

An identifier generated by the initiator and sent to the target upon logging in or out, that uniquely identifies each connection within a session.

[Network]  [Data Security] 

A security service that provides data integrity service for an individual IP datagram by detecting modification of the datagram without regard to the ordering of the datagram in a stream of datagrams.

[Storage System] 

A collection of replication sets grouped together to ensure write order consistency across all the replication sets' primary volumes.

An operation on a consistency group, such as changing replication from asynchronous to synchronous, applies to all the replication sets within the consistency group, and consequently their volumes.

[Computer System] 

1. A device for graphical or textual visual output from a computer system.

2. In systems, network and device management, an application that provides graphical and textual feedback regarding operation and status, and that may accept operator commands and input influencing operation and status.

Sophisticated consoles designed for the management of many systems from one location are sometimes called enterprise management consoles.

[Storage System] 

A data deduplication method that leverages knowledge of specific application data formats.

See content-agnostic data deduplication.

[Network] 

A transmission control algorithm in which the frames containing the subblocks that comprise a block of information are transmitted strictly in the order of the subblocks.

Continuously increasing relative offset offers simpler reassembly and detection of lost frames compared to random relative offset.

[Computer System] 

A body of software that provides common control and management.

When it executes on a device, control software is often referred to as firmware.

[Storage System] 

A disk array whose control software executes in a disk subsystem controller.

[Fibre Channel] 

A controlling switch that supports lossless Ethernet MACs.

[Storage System] 

A recording technique for storing data on an HDD where data is recorded on individual non-overlapping tracks which may be written randomly.

[Computer System] 

The pooling of compute, storage, and networking resources using either common management tools or common (shared) physical resources.

[Storage System] 

Deprecated synonym for rebuild / rebuilding.

An N-Port-Name associated with the Physical N-Port of a VFT Tagging N-Port, and not with any other FC-Port within the scope of its Name_Identifier format.

[Storage System] 

A disk data organization model in which the disk is assumed to consist of a fixed number of tracks, each having a maximum data capacity.

Multiple records of varying length may be written on each track of a Count-Key-Data disk, and the usable capacity of each track depends on the number of records written to it. The CKD architecture derives its name from the record format, which consists of a field containing the number of bytes in the key and data fields and a record address, an optional key field by which particular records can be easily recognized, and the data itself. CKD is the storage architecture used by IBM Corporation's mainframe computer systems. See fixed block architecture.

[Data Security] 

An unintended and/or unauthorized communications path that can be used to transfer information in a manner that violates a security policy.

[Hardware] 

Acronym for Central Processing Unit.

[Data Security] 

Information, passed from one entity to another, used to establish the sending entity's identity and/or access rights.

[Data Security] 

Acronym for Certificate Revocation List.

[Data Security] 

A set of operations performed in converting encrypted information to plaintext without initial knowledge of the algorithm and/or key employed in the encryption.

[Data Security] 

Method of sanitization in which the encryption key for the encrypted target data is sanitized, making recovery of the decrypted target data infeasible. [ISO/IEC 27040]

[Data Security] 

A function that maps plaintext strings of any length to bit strings of fixed length, such that it is computationally infeasible to find correlations between inputs and outputs, and such that given one part of the output, but not the input, it is computationally infeasible to predict any bit of the remaining output.

Cryptographic hash functions have many information security applications, notably in digital signatures, message authentication codes (MACs), and other forms of authentication. The output from a cryptographic hash function is known as a message digest or hash value.

[Data Security] 

The time span during which a specific key is authorized for use or in which the keys for a given system or application may remain in effect. [NIST SP 800-57 Part 1]

[Computer System] 

Abbreviation for Computational Storage Array.

[Management] 

Acronym for Common Schema Definition Language.

[Computer System] 

Abbreviation for Computational Storage Function.

[Computer System] 

Abbreviation for Computational Storage Processor.

[Computer System] 

Abbreviation for Computational Storage Device.

The running disparity present at a transmitter when the encoding of a valid data byte or special code is initiated, or at a receiver when the decoding of a transmission character is initiated.

[General] 

A unit, or component of a system that is designed to be replaced by "customers;" i.e., individuals who may not be trained as computer system service personnel.

See Field Replaceable Unit.

[Network]  [Fibre Channel] 

Synonym for cut through switching.

[Data Communication]  [Storage System] 

A scheme for checking the integrity of data that has been transmitted or stored and retrieved.

A CRC consists of a fixed number of bits computed as a function of the data to be protected, and appended to the data. When the data is read or received, the function is recomputed, and the result is compared to that appended to the data. Cyclic redundancy checks differ from error correcting codes in that they can detect a wide range of errors, but are not capable of correcting them. See error correcting code.