> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.tessell.com/tessell/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.tessell.com/tessell/tessell_glossary.md). # Tessell Glossary A reference guide to key terms and concepts used across the Tessell platform and documentation. *** ## A **Automatic Snapshots** Database snapshots taken automatically by Tessell at scheduled intervals, as defined by the configured RPO policy. These are deleted automatically according to the retention period set in the RPO policy. **Availability Machine (AM)** A logical construct in Tessell that is automatically associated with every provisioned database service. It acts as a centralized data management and lifecycle layer, handling snapshots, native backups, sanitization, data access policies, and cloning. Each AM is owned by the data owner of the corresponding database service. *** ## C **Clone** A fully functional copy of a database service created from an existing snapshot or backup. Clones are useful for testing, debugging production issues without downtime, or creating lower-environment copies of production databases. **Compute Shape** A predefined configuration that determines the number of vCPUs and memory allocated to a database instance. Tessell offers both standard performance and high-performance compute shapes across AWS, Azure, and GCP. **Control Plane** The management layer that handles provisioning, monitoring, scheduling, and configuration of database services. In the Business deployment plan, a dedicated control plane is provided. Control plane generally resides with tessell but no database data is stored in control plane. *** ## D **Data Access Policy (DAP)** A governance construct within the Availability Machine that controls how data is shared — defining what to share, how much, with whom, when, and in which regions. DAPs also allow the service owner to define the duration of sharing independently of their own retention period. For example, a service owner retaining snapshots for 7 days can choose to share only the last 2 days of snapshots with another user. **Data Plane** The layer of Tessell's architecture that resides in the customer's cloud tenant (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and hosts all actual database workloads. This includes databases, snapshots, backups, transaction logs, performance insights metrics, and database logs. Customers can choose to run databases on private networks within the data plane. The control plane never initiates inbound connections into the data plane. Instead, agents running within the data plane make outbound calls to the Tessell control plane's REST APIs over HTTPS — meaning customers do not need to open any inbound ports in their cloud environment to enable Tessell's management capabilities. Contrast with the **Control Plane**, which is hosted on Tessell's tenant and manages only metadata. **Dataflix** An application under the DB Services app family that provides a consumption-oriented view of available data assets, including catalogs for Point-in-Time Recovery regions, snapshots, backups, and sanitized snapshots for a given database service. **DB Governance** An application under the Governance app family used to manage tenant-wide database configurations, including enabling/disabling software images, managing SLAs, options profiles, parameter profiles, endpoint integrations, Active Directory domains, and license registrations. **DB Services (App Family)** One of the six app families in the Tessell portal. It contains applications for managing all aspects of database provisioning and operations, including My Services, Provisioning, Availability Machines, Dataflix, and Script Library. **Database Service** A fully managed database instance provisioned and operated through Tessell. Each database service runs on one or more dedicated virtual machines and can span multiple cloud regions. Supported engines include Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, and MongoDB. **DBaaS (Database-as-a-Service)** The core model of Tessell's offering, where database infrastructure is fully managed, automated, and delivered as a cloud service. Customers consume databases on demand without managing the underlying infrastructure. **Disaster Replica** A standby database instance provisioned in a separate region for disaster recovery. In the event of a regional failure, the disaster replica can be promoted as the primary. *** ## E **Engine** The database technology type used by a Tessell database service. Supported engines are Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, and MongoDB. **Events** A tab on the Database Service home page that displays a log of activities and state changes for a database service. *** ## F **Full Backup** A complete database-native backup taken at a scheduled interval. Full backups are supported across all Tessell-supported database engines — Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQL Server. *** ## G **Governance (App Family)** One of the six app families in the Tessell portal. It contains applications for managing cloud infrastructure, identity, and security — such as Subscriptions, Compute, Networks, IAM, and Security — as well as applications for database administration such as DB Governance. *** ## H **High-Performance Compute Shapes** Compute shapes backed by NVMe storage (local SSDs) designed for I/O-intensive, mission-critical database workloads. Examples include AWS i4i and i3en instance families and Azure Lsv3 series. *** ## I **IAM (Identity and Access Management)** An application under the Governance app family for managing users, roles, identity providers, and directory integrations. It is used to control which users can access which Tessell applications. **Incremental Backup** A database-native backup that captures only the changes made since the previous backup, reducing storage usage and backup time. Incremental backups are supported for Oracle and SQL Server only, and are used in conjunction with full backups in their respective backup schedules. **Instance** A virtual machine that hosts a database service. A database service may run across multiple instances (e.g., primary and replica nodes) for high availability purposes. *** ## M **Maintenance Window** A configurable time window during which Tessell applies database engine upgrades, patches, and other maintenance operations to minimize disruption to production workloads. **Manual Snapshot** An on-demand snapshot of a database service taken at any time by a user. Manual snapshots are not automatically deleted and must be removed manually. **Multi-AZ Deployment** A high-availability configuration where the primary database node is deployed in one availability zone and a synchronized replica is maintained in another. **My Services** An application under the DB Services app family that provides a central view of all provisioned database services, with options to monitor metrics, view logs, manage databases, create connection pools, configure integrations (e.g., Datadog), and set start/stop schedules. *** ## N **Native Backup** A database-engine-level backup (e.g., Oracle RMAN backups) stored in your cloud object storage (such as AWS S3 or Azure Blob Storage). These are used for long-term data retention and are distinct from cloud-native snapshots. **Networks** An application under the Governance app family used to add or remove virtual networks and security groups for your cloud account. **NVMe Storage** Non-volatile memory express storage — a high-speed storage technology used in Tessell's high-performance compute shapes to deliver superior I/O throughput for demanding database workloads. *** ## O **Options Profile** A configuration profile applied to a database service that enables or customizes specific database features or plugins (e.g., Percona Audit Plugin for MySQL). Managed through the DB Governance application. *** ## P **Parameter Profile** A named set of database engine configuration parameters that can be applied to one or more database services to standardize settings across your database estate. Managed through the DB Governance application. **PDB (Pluggable Database)** An Oracle-specific concept where multiple isolated databases (PDBs) can reside within a single container database (CDB). Tessell supports management of PDBs within Oracle database services. **PITR (Point-in-Time Recovery)** A capability that allows a database to be restored to any specific point in time within the retention window, using continuous transaction log backups. PITR requires transactional logs to be enabled in the RPO policy. **Provisioning** The process of creating a new database service on a chosen cloud provider and region. In the Tessell portal, this is performed through the Provisioning application under the DB Services app family. *** ## R **Read Replica** A read-only copy of a database service that offloads read traffic from the primary instance. **Recovery Point Objective (RPO)** A policy parameter that defines the maximum acceptable amount of data loss, expressed as a time interval. In Tessell, the RPO policy also governs snapshot schedules, log backup frequency, and retention periods. **RPO Policy** A configuration in Tessell that governs the frequency and retention of automated database snapshots and transaction log backups, ensuring recoverability and data protection. An RPO policy can be Standard (with a user-specified retention window of 1–35 days) or Custom (defined tenant-wide via the DB Governance app). It determines how often snapshots are taken (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly), how long they are kept, and whether continuous transaction log backups (enabling PITR) are included. RPO policies can also govern native backup schedules for Oracle RMAN backups. **RMAN (Recovery Manager)** Oracle's native backup and recovery tool. Tessell supports RMAN backups for Oracle database services as a native backup mechanism, stored in your cloud object storage. *** ## S **Sanitization** The process of masking or removing sensitive data (e.g., PII, credit card numbers) from a database snapshot before it is used in lower environments such as development or testing. Tessell supports both on-demand and scheduled sanitization workflows using user-provided SQL masking scripts. **Sanitized Snapshot** A snapshot of a database service that has been processed through a data masking (sanitization) workflow. Safe to share with non-production users or teams. **Schedules** Configurable time-based rules that automate start/stop/delete operations for database services, or automate sanitization workflows. **Script Library** An application under the DB Services app family that stores and manages data masking SQL scripts used in the sanitization workflow, including pre-scripts and post-scripts. **Security** An application under the Governance app family used to manage encryption keys for data-at-rest encryption and configure password policies. **Servers** An application under the Infrastructure Management app family that helps manage the individual VM instances hosting database services across different availability configurations. **SLA (Service Level Agreement)** In the Tessell context, an SLA is a platform-level policy that defines backup retention and recovery objectives. SLAs can be created and applied tenant-wide through the DB Governance application. **Snapshot** A point-in-time, application-consistent copy of a database service, taken using cloud-native snapshot technology. The first snapshot is always a full snapshot serving as the base, with subsequent snapshots being incremental. Snapshots are faster to restore than traditional backups. They are the default backup mechanism in Tessell. **Source DB** The database from which a clone or current service is created. The source DB does not need to be a live, active service — clones can be created from an Availability Machine even after the original source service has been deleted. **Standard Performance Compute Shapes** Compute shapes that use standard expandable cloud storage (e.g., EBS on AWS), suited for typical workloads that do not require NVMe-class I/O performance. **Subscription** A registered cloud account (AWS, Azure, or GCP) linked to your Tessell account, used to host database services. Managed via the Subscriptions app in the Governance app family. *** ## T **Tenant** An isolated organizational account within the Tessell platform. All users, database services, policies, and resources belong to a specific tenant. **Tickets** An application under the Support app family used to raise and manage support requests with the Tessell team. **Transaction Logs** Continuous logs of all database transactions, captured at a frequency of every 5 minutes. When enabled in the RPO policy, they enable Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR). Stored in AWS S3 or Azure Blob Storage. **TRN (Tessell Resource Name)** A globally unique identifier assigned to each Tessell resource (e.g., a database service or Availability Machine). Used for precise identification in APIs and platform operations. *** ## U **Utilization** An application under the Cost app family that provides a detailed breakdown of how cloud resources are being consumed across your database services. *** ## V **vCPU (Virtual CPU)** A virtualized processor unit allocated to a database instance. The number of vCPUs is determined by the selected compute shape and affects query throughput and concurrency. **Virtual Private Tessell (VPT)** A Tessell-hosted deployment plan designed for large enterprises. It provides a dedicated cloud account for your data infrastructure with dedicated servers and instances, while still being hosted and managed by Tessell. **Virtual Private Tessell @ Customer (VPT\@C)** A customer-hosted deployment option where all database services run within the customer's own cloud accounts, networks, and security policies. Tessell provides the managed service layer. Suited for governments and enterprises with strict data compliance requirements. **VPC (Virtual Private Cloud)** An isolated virtual network within a cloud provider's infrastructure. Tessell supports deployment within customer-managed VPCs in certain deployment configurations. *** --- # Agent Instructions This documentation is published with GitBook. GitBook is the documentation platform designed so that both humans and AI agents can read, navigate, and reason over technical content effectively. Learn more at gitbook.com. ## Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. 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