Basic concepts

This chapter explains the technical terms involved in the backup service. If you come encounter any unfamiliar concepts while reading, you can find their definitions and detailed explanations here.

Backup service

The backup service is responsible for managing backup plans and performing backup and recovery jobs for virtual machines.

Backup plan

Backup plans are used to plan and schedule data backup operations in detail. With a backup plan, you can define backup objects, backup services, backup repositories, backup schedules, backup windows, and retention policies for restore points to ensure reliable data backup and achieve data recovery in failure scenarios, thereby realizing service continuity and reliability.

Backup object

Virtual machines to be backed up.

Backup schedule

The frequency and time at which the backup plan is automatically executed. It specifies how often the backup service backs up virtual machines. A shorter backup schedule allows for a smaller RPO (Recovery Point Objective). For example, if the backup schedule is set to 15 minutes, the maximum potential data loss is limited to 15 minutes in case of a disaster.

Backup window

The time range during which the backup plan is allowed to execute automatically.

Full backup

Backs up all data of the virtual machine, including the operating system, applications, files, and configurations, to the repository. Full backups typically occur during the initial backup and provide a baseline for subsequent incremental backups.

Incremental backup

Backs up data that has changed since the last backup, continuously tracking and synchronizing changes in the data source to ensure data accuracy and consistency.

Restore point

A restore point in the backup and recovery function is the virtual machine data state generated by each backup operation and stored as files in the backup repository. It fully records the virtual machine data and configuration, reflecting the point-in-time state when the virtual machine was backed up.

Restore points allow virtual machines to quickly recover to a specific data state when needed. For example, in a disaster recovery scenario, restoring a virtual machine to a previous point in time to restore normal operation of the virtual machine. Generating restore points regularly can ensure that the data of the virtual machine is up to date, thus guaranteeing service continuity and availability. You can also use the backup files corresponding to the restore point to rebuild a virtual machine in the state of the corresponding time point for development, testing and other purposes.

Compression

Compresses the virtual volume data before transmitting it to the backup repository and storing it as backup files.

Restore the virtual machine in place

A restore method that restores the virtual volume data of a virtual machine to the same state when the restore point was generated.

Rebuild the virtual machine

A restore method that creates a virtual machine in the same state as the original virtual machine when the restore point was generated.

RPO (Recovery Point Objective)

Recovery Point Objective refers to the acceptable time frame for data loss in a disaster recovery scenario. RPO is measured in time and indicates the time span from the most recent backup or restore point to the occurrence of the failure. A smaller RPO value indicates that the system allows less data loss in the event of a failure. A larger RPO value means that the system can tolerate a longer time range of data loss during a failure.

ACOS cluster

The ACOS (Arcfra Cloud Operating System) cluster is a logical concept. In the production environment, a ACOS cluster consists of at least three nodes interconnected through a network.

AVE

AVE (Arcfra Virtualization Engine) refers to the KVM-based hypervisor used in the hyper-converged software when deploying ACOS directly on servers. Alongside essential functions like virtual machine lifecycle management, power operations, high availability, and cold or hot migration, when integrated with the storage component ABS (Arcfra Block Storage), offers advanced virtual machine services like sub-second snapshots, templates, and clones.

AVE is designed to be straightforward and user-friendly, allowing all operations within the ACOS hyper-converged cluster to be carried out seamlessly through AOC.

AOC

Arcfra Operation Center, which is Arcfra multi-cluster centralized resource management platform, designed to manage multiple Arcfra clusters and system services within and across data centers. The platform also provides complete and standard RESTful APIs and SDKs in multiple languages for managing the infrastructure.