Glossary

activate new content
In the publishing process, activating new content means moving content that has just been delivered to a subscriber from its temporary location to its permanent location on the subscriber, and making it available to the viewer.
See also controlled activation and independent activation.

archived publication
In archived publications, the GLOBAL-SITE Controller stores a copy of the file contents of each edition of a publication using its RCE version control system. This archiving of the contents allows the user to revert to a former publication edition and/or section version.

authentication
Authentication is a method of confirming the identity of a user or client attempting to gain access to your system. There are different methods of authentication, including the confirmation of passwords, certificates, or information stored on an ID card.

cache subscriber
A cache subscriber is the GLOBAL-SITE Controller's way of recognizing a cache and the URLs it caches content for. The GLOBAL-SITE Controller sends information to the cache subscriber regarding the availability of new content on an origin server. Usually based on a server or virtual server subscriber, a cache subscriber is represented by the host name or IP address of an EDGE-FX Cache in your network.

commit
To move files from a temporary to a permanent directory on a subscriber (target server). See activate new content.

controlled activation
In controlled activation, the publishing process moves all content together through a series of phases for a collection of subscribers. For instance, before the content for any one section can be activated on one or more subscribers, all content for all sections is copied to all subscribers. Compare to independent activation.

current edition
The edition of a publication published to a subscriber and available to its users. All subscribers should have the same current edition. There may be multiple editions of a GLOBAL-SITE publication on the publisher, but only one is currently published to a subscriber.

deliver edition
Part of the final process in the GLOBAL-SITE Controller publishing process, where the content, a specific edition of a publication, is copied to the target servers, or subscribers.

disk mirroring
When setting up the GLOBAL-SITE Controller, you can choose to mirror the two disks. This writes duplicate data to both disks, allowing you to use half of your disk space, but providing error recovery in case either of the two disks should fail.

distributor
A distributor is a secondary GLOBAL-SITE Controller that can be used to deliver publications that it receives from the primary controller. A distributor may be located in a remote data center. The distributor can provide the primary controller access to additional subscribers that are geographically closer to the distributor.
Compare to publisher.

edition
In archived publications, an edition is a complete collection of specific versions of selected sections. An edition is an instance of a publication that indicates two things: which versions of selected sections are to be included, and that the edition is ready to be delivered (published), or has already been delivered to subscribing servers.

An archived publication may have multiple editions, but only one is currently published to the publication's subscribers. Past editions may be kept for backup, history, comparison, and other purposes.

Non-archived publications do not have editions stored on the GLOBAL-SITE Controller.

exception
A directory, located within the path of a section, that is to be excluded from the section when creating a section version. To exclude a directory from a section, you must specify the absolute path of the directory to be excluded. You can only exclude directories, not files.
See also file filter.

expire
The GLOBAL-SITE Controller tells the EDGE-FX Cache to expire content. To the cache this means that the content is stale and it retrieves the new content and forwards it to the end user.

file filter
This GLOBAL-SITE Controller feature either includes or excludes all files in a path that have a specified file extension, such as gif, jpg, or html. File extensions are more consistent in Windows, where they often identify specific file types, but this feature can work equally well in UNIX systems, where naming conventions allow you to group related files by extension. For example, html is the extension in this file authentication, basic and digest.

Name: home.banner.html

First-Time Boot utility
A utility that walks you through the initial system configuration process. The First-Time Boot utility runs automatically when you turn on a controller for the first time.

FTP
File Transfer Protocol: A method that the GLOBAL-SITE Controller uses to collect and publish file-based content to Internet sites.

FTP-Push
FTP-Push is a file transfer method used by the GLOBAL-SITE Controller that is based on basic FTP. FTP-Push sections can push files from the content source (FTP client) to the controller (FTP server), where they are stored. If a section uses FTP-Push as its transfer method, you can configure the update of content to be used to trigger the delivery of that publication.

GLOBAL-SITE agent
The GLOBAL-SITE Controller agent allows a GLOBAL-SITE Controller to start and stop web services, reboot the server, and register components, as well as transfer content files.

GLOBAL-SITE identifier
The unique, pre-assigned numeric identifier provided by your vendor that distinguishes one GLOBAL-SITE Controller from all others. You must have this identifier in order to add a GLOBAL-SITE Controller as a distributor. If you change the GLOBAL-SITE identifier, it makes your section data unreachable, and prevents communication between your GLOBAL-SITE Controllers.

independent activation
In independent activation, the GLOBAL-SITE Controller moves content through the publishing phases section by section, independent of its association with a subscriber or subscribers. One section can be copied and then activated for one subscriber before another section is copied. Compare to controlled activation.

key phrase
A phrase that is shared by the pair of publisher and distributor GLOBAL-SITE Controllers. Both the publisher and the distributor must use the same key phrase in order to communicate. You must have the key phrase in order to add a GLOBAL-SITE Controller as a distributor. (Unlike the GLOBAL-SITE identifier, the key phrase is user-created, and not provided by your vendor.)

non-archived publication
A non-archived publication allows for basic, fundamental content replication. A non-archived publication does not keep copies of the content (versions) on the GLOBAL-SITE Controller as an archived publication does. Rather, it takes content directly from the user's source, and moves it directly to the location where it will be accessed by customers. However, non-archived publications create and keep version lists of dated files so that the GLOBAL-SITE Controller can detect changed files. Compare to archived publication.

origin server
Used in a cache context, the web server referenced by a cache, on which all copies of your content reside and which your cache is caching content for.

passphrase
A string of words and characters that you type in to authenticate yourself as a user. Passphrases are similar to passwords, but longer. Passphrases are considered to be more secure because of their greater length.

persistence
A series of related connections received from the same client. When persistence is turned on, the BIG-IP Controller does not load balance the connections; instead, it returns the clients to the node that they previously connected to.

populate
The GLOBAL-SITE Controller tells the EDGE-FX Cache to populate content. To the cache, this has the same effect as a user entering a URL in the address box of the browser: the cache goes out to its origin server and gets the new content. Therefore, the cache always has the most current content before an end user requests it. Compare to expire.

private key
One of two keys used in asymmetric cryptography. The private key can be used to encrypt data that can then be decrypted using the public key, which is shared with all involved parties.

public key
The second of two keys used in asymmetric cryptography. The public key, which is shared by all involved parties, is used to decrypt data that has been encrypted with the private key.

publication
Each GLOBAL-SITE Controller publication is a collection of information about subscribers, content, and publication options. It maps and records where to get source information (content), and where to store it, and how and where to deliver (publish) it. A publication may maintain multiple editions simultaneously; it defines which versions of which sections are used in each edition, and which go to each subscriber.

publication options
Currently, publication options allow you to determine how the GLOBAL-SITE Controller handles initiating the publishing process, scheduling the publishing, and activating the new content. It also provides settings for how the GLOBAL-SITE Controller deals with the BIG-IP Controller virtual servers, how it handles errors, and error email notification.

publication targets
See subscribers.

publish
The process of identifying specific versions of sections to be included in an edition, and then delivering and activating this edition to subscribers.
See deliver edition.

publisher
The GLOBAL-SITE Controller that is sending content to the subscribers. A publisher may send content directly to subscribers, or to another GLOBAL-SITE Controller functioning as a distributor that passes the publication to the subscribers.
See also, distributor.

RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Drives)
RAID allows you to store information in multiple hard drive locations, providing the safety of redundancy or the performance of writing data simultaneously to multiple locations. In the case of redundant disks, if one disk fails, another can immediately take over, reducing the total failure rates and providing fault-tolerance. Performance improvements result from using simultaneous operating system processes to write to multiple disks at the same time.

repeater
See distributor.

repository
See section.

section
The source content retrieved via one path (server and directory) and access method (authorization and protocol). Different updates are saved as unique section versions, which may be used in different publications and publication editions.

signed certificate
A signed certificate verifies a person's identity online to another user or application. Once that person's identity is verified with the other user or application, those parties can do a private key exchange to establish an encrypted session.

subscriber
The location reached via a specific path (server and directory) and access method (authorization and protocol) where content is delivered, or published. The subscriber is the server that content is published to. In the GLOBAL-SITE Controller, the subscriber information includes a destination path for each section of a publication.

version
A version exists in archived publications only. A version is one particular instance of a section (in an archived publication) that differs from other earlier or later instances of that section due to changes or modifications. In archived publications, sections can have multiple versions which are numbered and dated to identify them as unique. You can specify the version of any section that you want included in an edition of a publication.

Non-archived publications do not have versions. See non-archived publications.

WebDAV (Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning)
WebDAV (and WebDAV-SSL) is a file transfer method used by the GLOBAL-SITE Controller. It is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard for collaborative authoring on the Web. WebDAV uses a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol. Therefore, to use WebDAV as your transfer method, you need to have a web server that is compatible with WebDAV (IIS5.x or Apache HTTP Server with mod_dav) or you need to install the GLOBAL-SITE agent on the remote server. WebDAV also adds write access to the read access provided by HTTP. See also GLOBAL-SITE agent.