These are some terms we use quite liberally – both in this document, and in our user interface. So here’s a short description of what each of them means.

StoreGrid Service Provider Edition Terminology:

• Service Provider - The provider who offers the online backup service.

• Reseller - The reseller who sells the online backup service provided by the Service Provider to the end customers.

• Customer - The end customer of the Reseller/Service Provider who is backing up online to the service provider's data center.

• Client - PCs/Laptops/Servers in the customer site backing up to the StoreGrid server installed in the Service Provider's data center. These PCs have StoreGrid installed in the Client mode.

• StoreGrid ID - This is the unique ID each installation of StoreGrid is identified with. StoreGrid will prompt you to give an ID during the installation. It will automatically take the machine name as the StoreGrid ID by default.

• MCALs - MCALs are monthly licensing units. MCALs are added to the backup server by applying MCAL license keys. The added MCALs in the backup server are consumed on a monthly basis for licensing the clients that are backing up to the backup server. No MCALs are needed to be added in the replication server.

StoreGrid General Terminology:

StoreGrid Server:

A StoreGrid Server receives (and stores) backup data from StoreGrid Clients.

The backed up data is stored in the machine which runs the StoreGrid Server – a PC can run StoreGrid server if you plan to store data on that PC.

StoreGrid Client:

A machine that has data it wants to back up has to run StoreGrid Client.

The StoreGrid Client backs up its data on to a machine running StoreGrid Server.

(anyone who purchases a paid license of StoreGrid is also a StoreGrid client )

Replication:

Term used for the process where a backup server sends its backup data to a replication server to create a redundant copy of the backup data.

StoreGrid Replication Server :

A machine that receives replication data from a backup server. In case the backup server crashes, it can be restored from the replicated data in the replication server. A backup server can replicate to only one replication server. A replication server can accept replication from more than one backup servers.

StoreGrid Cluster :

The term specifies the deployment of StoreGrid in a cluster. A number of StoreGrid Servers [Backup & Replication] can be deployed to be run as a single entity and all storing and accessing the StoreGrid metadata in a centralized StoreGrid Database using ODBC. This will enable StoreGrid Server to scale to multiple StoreGrid clients to connect for backup/restore processes simultaneously.

StoreGrid Cluster Node :

This mentions one of the StoreGrid Server instances running inside the StoreGrid Cluster. They get registered to the Cluster configuration as an active node in the cluster at startup.

Server Lookup :

A client looking up to the Master Server in the cluster to determine whom to connect for backup and restore.

StoreGrid Web Console :

This is the browser based StoreGrid user interface from which the backup, restore and administration of StoreGrid servers and clients are done.
Since the user interface is browser based, any StoreGrid Client or Server can be configured and administered from any location.

Remote / Online Backups :

The same as client-server (see above), except that the ‘server’ is outside the clients’ network.

Web Services API :

The ability to access StoreGrid meta information via standard HTTP/HTTPS Requests from the StoreGrid Web Portal.