IT Managed Services Glossary of Terms

Business Continuity
The ability of an organisation to continue to function even after a disastrous event, accomplished through the deployment of redundant hardware and software, the use of fault tolerant systems, as well as a solid backup and recovery strategy.

Byte
A unit of storage capable of holding a single character. On almost all modern computers, a byte is equal to 8 bits. Large amounts of memory are indicated in terms of kilobytes (1,024 bytes), megabytes (1,048,576 bytes), and gigabytes (1,073,741,824 bytes).

Cache
A high-speed memory or storage device that helps reduce the time required to read and write data to a slower device, such as a hard drive.

Compression
The process of reformatting data so it takes less space on your storage medium(s).

DAS (Direct Attached Storage)
DAS is storage that is directly connected to a server/workstation. This direct connection provides fast access to the data; however, storage is only accessible from that server/workstation. DAS includes the internally attached local disk drives or any other storage medium attached directly.

Data transfer rate
The speed at which data is transmitted from one device to another. Data transfer rates are often measured in megabits per second (Mbps) or megabytes per second (MBps).

Dedicated
A dedicated device has only one function i.e. a backup server which has no other jobs other than to backup data.