Definition of Terms

The following terms may be helpful to users of this documentation.

Term	Definition
Anvil	Hammerspace metadata node. This virtual machine contains the administrative GUI and CLI as well as metadata, and performs multiple critical functions in a Hammerspace deployment.
Availability set	A logical grouping of VMs that allows Azure to understand how your application is built to provide redundancy and availability. Each availability set can be configured with up to three fault domains and twenty update domains. These configurations cannot be changed once the availability set has been created. Update domains indicate groups of virtual machines and underlying physical hardware that can be rebooted at the same time. See the Microsoft documentation on Availability Sets for more information.
Availability zone	Azure availability zones are connected by a high-performance network with a round-trip latency of less than 2 ms. They help your data stay synchronized and accessible when things go wrong. Each zone is composed of one or more datacenters equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking infrastructure. Availability zones are designed so that if one zone is affected, regional services, capacity, and high availability are supported by the remaining two zones.
DSX	Hammerspace data services node (Data Service eXtensions). This virtual machine provides the protocol front-end services, such as SMB, NFS, and Kubernetes CSI. It also controls backend connections and services to third-party storage volumes and data mobility services, and can optionally provide directly attached storage.
Global Data Environment	Provides a parallel global file system with file-granular declarative control of data. Hammerspace objectives provide highly customizable metadata tagging and descriptors which, in turn, can be used in declarative actions that allow organizations to control the business outcomes of their data. See the Hammerspace website for more information.
Mover	Also known as the Data Mover. Provides non-disruptive and end-user-transparent data mobility. Hammerspace administrators can move live data declaratively between backend storage systems and volumes without any disruption to productivity.
Portal	Hosted by the DSX node, this is the mount point for all front-end protocols (SMB, NFS, and the Kubernetes CSI driver) that make up the Hammerspace Global File System.
Proximity placement group	A logical grouping used to make sure that Azure compute resources are physically located close to each other. Proximity placement groups are useful for workloads where low latency is a requirement. See the Microsoft documentation for additional information.
Region	Each Azure region features datacenters deployed within a latency-defined perimeter. They are connected through a dedicated regional low-latency network. This design ensures that Azure services within any region offer the best possible performance and security.
Resource group	A logical container that holds related resources for an Azure solution. The resource group can include all the resources for the solution, or only those resources that you want to manage as a group. Generally, add resources that share the same lifecycle to the same resource group so you can easily deploy, update, and delete them as a group.
Store	The directly attached storage disks on DSX, such as the ones provisioned during the deployment process.

Term

Definition

Anvil

Hammerspace metadata node. This virtual machine contains the administrative GUI and CLI as well as metadata, and performs multiple critical functions in a Hammerspace deployment.

Availability set

A logical grouping of VMs that allows Azure to understand how your application is built to provide redundancy and availability. Each availability set can be configured with up to three fault domains and twenty update domains. These configurations cannot be changed once the availability set has been created. Update domains indicate groups of virtual machines and underlying physical hardware that can be rebooted at the same time. See the Microsoft documentation on Availability Sets for more information.

Availability zone

Azure availability zones are connected by a high-performance network with a round-trip latency of less than 2 ms. They help your data stay synchronized and accessible when things go wrong. Each zone is composed of one or more datacenters equipped with independent power, cooling, and networking infrastructure. Availability zones are designed so that if one zone is affected, regional services, capacity, and high availability are supported by the remaining two zones.

DSX

Hammerspace data services node (Data Service eXtensions). This virtual machine provides the protocol front-end services, such as SMB, NFS, and Kubernetes CSI. It also controls backend connections and services to third-party storage volumes and data mobility services, and can optionally provide directly attached storage.

Global Data Environment

Provides a parallel global file system with file-granular declarative control of data. Hammerspace objectives provide highly customizable metadata tagging and descriptors which, in turn, can be used in declarative actions that allow organizations to control the business outcomes of their data. See the Hammerspace website for more information.

Mover

Also known as the Data Mover. Provides non-disruptive and end-user-transparent data mobility. Hammerspace administrators can move live data declaratively between backend storage systems and volumes without any disruption to productivity.

Portal

Hosted by the DSX node, this is the mount point for all front-end protocols (SMB, NFS, and the Kubernetes CSI driver) that make up the Hammerspace Global File System.

Proximity placement group

A logical grouping used to make sure that Azure compute resources are physically located close to each other. Proximity placement groups are useful for workloads where low latency is a requirement. See the Microsoft documentation for additional information.

Region

Each Azure region features datacenters deployed within a latency-defined perimeter. They are connected through a dedicated regional low-latency network. This design ensures that Azure services within any region offer the best possible performance and security.

Resource group

A logical container that holds related resources for an Azure solution. The resource group can include all the resources for the solution, or only those resources that you want to manage as a group. Generally, add resources that share the same lifecycle to the same resource group so you can easily deploy, update, and delete them as a group.

Store

The directly attached storage disks on DSX, such as the ones provisioned during the deployment process.