Plan and install
Terminology glossary
Definitions for the terms Datamotive uses across the product and documentation.
- Product
- Datamotive Platform
- Version
- v2.0.3
- Last updated
- Updated
- Reading time
- 1 min read
This glossary defines the terms used in the Datamotive product and documentation. Where a term has a specific Datamotive meaning, that meaning is given.
Sites and topology
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Protected site | The source cloud or on-premises environment hosting the workloads and associated instances. |
| Protected virtual machines | Virtual instances within the source environment marked for migration and/or disaster recovery. |
| Recovery site | The target site where workloads are migrated and/or recovered. |
| Recovered instances | The instances created on the target site as part of the recovery process — native to the target platform (e.g. a protected vSphere VM recovered as a native EC2 instance). |
| Site | A configured pairing of platform type, platform credentials, and a Datamotive node — typed as Protect or Recover. |
Components
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Management Server (Management Node) | Virtual appliance providing the UI, CLI, and REST APIs, plus orchestration, scheduling, monitoring, and metadata. Deployed on both sites; also acts as a replication node for up to 40 disks. |
| Replication Node | Virtual appliance executing data replication jobs. Added in pairs (source + target) to scale horizontally; capped at 40 parallel disks per node for optimum performance. |
| Prep Node (Win Prep Node) | Windows appliance on the recovery site, powered on only during Windows VM recovery or migration. |
| DeDupe Node | Appliance maintaining checksums and data for transferred chunks so already-replicated chunks are reused, reducing data transfer. |
| Day2Operation Node | Optional appliance providing a centralized portal for protection plans, alerts, replication status, and operational metrics across the DR estate. |
| Node | Any Datamotive appliance registered with a Management Server: Management, Replication, Prep Node, or Dedupe Server. |
Protection and recovery
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Protection plan | The logical group for protecting workloads: source and target sites, protected VMs, boot order, replication schedule, and recovery configuration. |
| Replication iteration | One pass of replication for a plan: snapshot, identify changed data, transfer. The first iteration transfers full disk data; later iterations are incremental. |
| CBT (Changed Block Tracking) | Hypervisor mechanism recording which disk blocks changed. Essential for VMware sources; enabled by the plan wizard. |
| RPO (Recovery Point Objective) | Maximum acceptable data loss, set by the plan’s replication interval. The dashboard tracks whether each VM meets it. |
| RTO (Recovery Time Objective) | Maximum acceptable time to bring a workload back. Datamotive targets a 10-minute recovery SLA irrespective of source cloud, platform, and size. |
| Test recovery (test drill) | Non-disruptive recovery of the last consistent replicated copy into an isolated environment. Does not consume license capacity. |
| Full recovery (failover) | Recovery of protected instances on the recovery site after a disaster or planned promotion. |
| Migration | Final cutover of workloads to the target platform with zero data loss (source powered off, zero changed data). |
| Reverse (failback) | Reverse replication of recovered workloads back to the original source site — differential or full. |
| Point-in-time checkpoint | A retained replicated copy at a configured periodicity that can be used for recovery instead of the latest copy. Checkpoints can be preserved or deleted. |
| Playbook | An Excel-based definition of a protection plan, used for bulk creation and as exported plan documentation. |
Operations
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Job | A tracked unit of work — replication iteration, recovery, migration, or cleanup — with status, duration, and detail. Viewed under Jobs. |
| Sync status | Per-VM replication state (init-success, in-sync, exceeded interval, …). See the Status check page for the full vocabulary. |
| Event | A record of a user or system action — the audit trail. Four levels: Information, Warning, Error, Critical. |
| Alert | A server-generated warning derived from events, tagged with severity, requiring acknowledgement or action. |
| Bandwidth throttling | Caps replication network usage globally, per node, or per time window. |
| Support bundle | A diagnostics archive generated under Settings → Tech Support for troubleshooting with Datamotive support. |
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