Glossary of Magnus Box terms

In short

This glossary explains the terms you'll see in the Magnus Box Web Portal, the Magnus Box Application and this Help Center. Each entry links to the article with the details. Partners can white-label the app and the portal, so your own brand name may appear where these articles say Magnus Box.

Accounts and management

Admin account: Your own sign-in to the Web Portal, used to manage all your clients. Protect it with two-factor authentication. See Configure two-factor authentication.
Web Portal: The Magnus Box Web Portal, the browser-based console where you manage users, devices, policies and jobs. Some menu labels read Management Console. See User Configuration Within the Magnus Box Web Portal.
User (user account): A client's backup account, with its own username and password. One user can have several devices. Listed under Management Console > Users.
User group: A folder for organizing user accounts in the Web Portal, for example one group per client company. See Group client accounts with User Groups.
Policy: A set of settings and restrictions applied to users, such as default Protected Items, schedules, retention and what users may change. Managed under User policies. See Policy Settings.
Quota: A limit on how much a user or Storage Vault may store, or how many devices or Microsoft 365 accounts a user may protect. See Set storage and usage quotas.
White-label branding: Your own name, logo and colors on the app and the Web Portal. See White label branding.
NFR license: A not-for-resale license for your own internal use. See How to use your NFR licenses.

Devices and the app

Magnus Box Application (the app): The backup software installed on a client's computer, server or NAS. It runs the backups and restores. See Application Structure.
Device: A computer, server or NAS registered to a user account. See Manage devices from the Devices page.
Online / Offline: A device is online when the app is running and connected to the Web Portal. You can only run remote actions, such as a remote backup or restore, on an online device.
Revoke: Removing a device from a user account, for example when a computer is retired. See Revoke a device.
Remote registration: Registering a newly installed device to a user from the Web Portal, without typing the client's password on the device. See Remote Installation Guide.

Backups

Protected Item: A description of what to back up on a device, such as certain folders, a whole disk or a client's Microsoft 365 mailboxes and sites, plus its schedule and retention. Each Protected Item has a type, such as Files and Folders, Disk Image or Microsoft Office 365. See How to create a Protected Item.
Default Protected Item: A Protected Item defined in a policy and created automatically on devices. See Set default Protected Items and schedules with policies.
Storage Vault: Where backup data is stored: Magnus Box Cloud Storage, or a local drive, NAS or other location. Data in a vault is compressed, encrypted and deduplicated. See Creating Storage Vaults and Isolated vs shared Storage Vaults.
Magnus Box Cloud Storage: Our cloud storage. In the Web Portal it appears as the Cloud Storage Vault template. See Where is my client's data stored?.
Schedule: When a Protected Item backs up and to which vault. See Backup schedules explained.
Snapshot: One backup of a Protected Item at a point in time. You pick a snapshot when you restore. See How to view older snapshots.
Retention policy and retention pass: The rules for which snapshots to keep, and the clean-up job that deletes the rest. See Retention policies and retention passes.
Deduplication and chunking: Data is split into chunks, and each unique chunk is stored only once per vault, so later backups only upload changes. See Chunking Overview.
Encryption: Data is encrypted on the device before upload, with keys protected by the user account password. See Encryption and key management.
VSS (filesystem snapshot): A Windows feature the app uses to back up open files consistently. See Troubleshooting VSS.
Agentless VM backup: Backing up whole virtual machines from the Hyper-V, VMware or Proxmox host instead of inside each guest. See VM backup methods: agentless vs. inside the guest.
Changed Block Tracking (CBT): A hypervisor feature that lets VM backups read only the blocks that changed since the last backup.
Lock and unlock: A vault is locked while a job writes to it. An unlock clears a lock left behind by a crashed job. See Storage Vault Locks.
Seed loading: Sending the first large backup on a physical drive instead of over the internet. See Seed Loading.

Jobs and monitoring

Job: One run of a backup, restore or other task. Each job has a status, such as Success, Warning, Error or Missed, and a report. See Job logs, recent activity and job statuses explained.
Recent activity: A Web Portal page showing each Protected Item's latest job results at a glance.
Email report: An automatic email about jobs, sent per user. See Email Addresses.

Restores

Restore method: How restored data comes back, for example as files, as an archive, or as a VM. See Restore options explained.
Test restore (simulate restore): A restore that reads and rebuilds the data without saving it, to prove the backup works. See Run a test restore.
Granular restore: Restoring single files from a Disk Image or VM backup. See Restore single files from image and VM backups.
Bare-metal restore: Restoring a whole machine onto empty hardware from a Disk Image. See Recover a whole machine (bare-metal restore).
P2V (physical to virtual): Restoring a physical machine's Disk Image as a virtual machine. See Restore a backup as a virtual machine.
Recovery media: A bootable USB drive or ISO that runs the app so you can restore a machine that won't start. See Recovery Media.
Restore Via Mail: A service where we ship a client's data on an encrypted drive. See Restore Via Mail.