Glossary

Vocabulary used across the RestorSignal documentation and reference framework.

This glossary fixes the meaning of terms used throughout the RestorSignal documentation, from the standpoint of restore verification — not backup production.

Artifact (backup artifact)

The concrete object produced by a backup solution and intended to be restored: an archive file, an export, a snapshot, a database dump. The artifact is always chosen and supplied by the client; RestorSignal never produces it itself.

Runner

The execution component that performs the restore and its associated checks. A runner can be local (installed inside the client's own environment) or provisioned inside a disposable environment for the duration of the test.

Restore

The technical operation of reconstructing a system, database, or dataset into a usable state from an artifact. This is the operation RestorSignal actually performs, rather than relying on the status reported by the backup tool.

Restore verification

The complete process RestorSignal carries out: restoring an artifact designated by the client, observing the result against defined criteria, and documenting that result as an evidence package.

Evidence

A fact observed during a test run that serves as the basis for qualifying the result — for example, that a service started, that a control query returned the expected result, or that a restored file is readable.

Evidence package

The structured, dated set of evidence, criteria, and observations RestorSignal seals at most once per context and per calendar day, consolidating every run received during that period — never a fresh dossier per individual run. This is RestorSignal's central deliverable, distinct from a bare PASS/FAIL status. See The evidence package for the full model.

Evidence level

The depth of the controls applied during a verification, ranging from the most basic (for example: the archive is readable) to the most complete (for example: the application restarts and responds to a defined functional check). Evidence levels are defined in RestorSignal's normative reference framework, not reinvented in this documentation.

PASS

A status indicating that the check ran and the expected condition is demonstrated.

FAIL

A status indicating that the check ran correctly but the expected condition is not satisfied.

ERROR

A status indicating that the check could not be evaluated correctly — a timeout, an unavailable infrastructure, a missing dependency. An ERROR is never equivalent to a PASS and is never hidden inside a global summary.

Tenant

A logically isolated space corresponding to a client or organization within the RestorSignal platform, ensuring that one client's artifacts, results, and evidence packages remain separate from another's.

Context

RestorSignal Ops's tracking and billing unit: the combination of a backup source, a workload, an expected-frequency policy and a test profile — for example client-a / erp-mariadb-prod. A context is identified by a stable identifier, never by its label: renaming it, editing its description, or changing its expected cadence never creates a new context, and deactivating then reactivating it stays the same context, with the same history. It is the context — never an isolated run — that anchors the daily Evidence and the contractual count of tracked contexts.

Checksum

A control value computed from the content of a file or stream, used to detect alteration between two points in time.

Digest

A cryptographic fingerprint of a piece of content, used in particular to guarantee that an artifact received by RestorSignal matches exactly the one designated by the client, without having been modified in transit.

Timestamp

A time marker attached to an event (an artifact's receipt, the start and end of a check, the generation of an evidence package), used for the chronological traceability of a run.

Reference framework

The documented, versioned set of RestorSignal's normative rules — definitions of evidence levels, statuses, control criteria — that is authoritative whenever a definition is in question. The public documentation explains this framework but never constitutes a competing second version of it.

Mandatory control

A verification criterion that must be satisfied for a given scenario to produce a PASS result, independent of any optional controls also executed.

Disposable environment

An execution environment provisioned specifically for the duration of a test, isolated, and then destroyed once the evidence package has been produced — as opposed to a persistent local runner installed inside the client's own infrastructure.