Introducing the High Availability Glossary
A few months back we acknowledged here on our blog the common misconceptions behind the term “virtualization.” After thinking about it some more, we realized that there are many commonly used terms in the High Availability, Clustering and Disaster Recovery space that could also benefit from some clarification. To alleviate some of the confusion and help standardize the language around Availability, we’ve created a glossary of terms to be housed on our blog (click the Glossary tab). Here, we’ll provide our take on common phrases that will help IT Managers make educated decisions when considering an Availability, Virtualization or Disaster Recovery solution. We encourage you to help us cultivate the glossary by commenting on our definitions, or provide us with your own. The terms identified are just a jumping-off point, so please feel free to suggest other terms you would like to see defined.
The goal of this is to give IT Professionals from CIO’s to IT Managers a place to find clear and consistent definitions, rather than being bamboozled by the disparate “lingo” being thrown around within the industry.
I think it is a great move. We need to get our CIOs and our IT managers out of the complex nebulae of superfluous terminologies, it is scaring them. I think we ought to add some simplicity to it: simple terms like: portability; availability; provisioning; thin clients; thick clients; mobility will help them relate to their current and day-to-day needs and requirements.
You can’t imagine, even a term like “hypervisor” is a big turn off in the board room. I simply use terms like “migration” and “upgrade”, instead of NGDC, which is cooler. I felt like a dork when couple of seniors at my office started laughing when I used a term like CSR, ok its Holland and people aren’t really much into english ;-), and then he quickly looked at his assistant and asked her to note it down.
August 24th, 2007 at 2:19 pmHi Tarry,
Thank you for the positive feedback. We agree… the language used in this space can be daunting and unnecessarily confusing. We’ll take a crack at defining some of the additional terms that you’ve sugested.
Cheers.
September 6th, 2007 at 8:10 am