Glossary

A

Agile : An iterative approach to software development and project management that emphasizes flexibility, customer feedback, and rapid delivery.

AIOps : Application of artificial intelligence for IT operations, enhancing monitoring, incident response, and automation.

Ansible : An open-source automation tool for configuration management, application deployment, and task automation.

API (Application Programming Interface) : A set of definitions and protocols for building and integrating application software.

AWS (Amazon Web Services) : Amazon's comprehensive cloud computing platform offering various services for computing, storage, and networking.

Azure : Microsoft's cloud computing platform providing a wide range of cloud services.

B

Blue-Green Deployment : A deployment strategy using two identical environments to minimize downtime and risk.

Bare Metal : Physical servers without virtualization or containerization layers.

C

CI/CD : Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment - practices that automate software delivery processes.

CNAPP (Cloud-Native Application Protection Platform) : Integrated security platform combining CSPM, CWPP, and KSPM capabilities for cloud-native applications.

CSPM (Cloud Security Posture Management) : Continuous monitoring and assessment of cloud infrastructure security posture.

Containerization : Packaging application code and dependencies together for consistent deployment across environments.

Configuration Drift : The phenomenon where deployed infrastructure diverges from its defined desired state.

D

Docker : A platform for developing, shipping, and running applications in containers.

DevOps : A set of practices combining software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten development cycles and provide continuous delivery.

DevSecOps : Integration of security practices within DevOps processes.

E

Edge Computing : Distributed computing paradigm that brings computation and data storage closer to the location where it is needed.

Elasticity : The ability to automatically scale computing resources up or down based on demand.

F

Failover : Switching to a redundant system upon the failure of the primary system.

Feature Flag : A software development technique that turns functionality on/off without deploying new code.

FinOps : Cloud financial operations combining finance, technology, and business practices to manage and optimize cloud costs.

Flux : A GitOps tool for Kubernetes that ensures clusters are configured as specified in Git.

G

Git : A distributed version control system for tracking changes in source code.

GitOps : A way of implementing Continuous Deployment for cloud native applications using Git as the single source of truth.

H

HAProxy : An open-source load balancer and proxy server for TCP and HTTP-based applications.

Helm : A package manager for Kubernetes that helps manage Kubernetes applications.

I

IaC (Infrastructure as Code) : Managing and provisioning infrastructure through code instead of manual processes.

Immutable Infrastructure : Infrastructure that is never modified after deployment; changes require new deployments.

K

Kubernetes : An open-source container orchestration platform for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications.

Kustomize : A Kubernetes native configuration management tool.

L

Load Balancer : A device or service that distributes network traffic across multiple servers.

LLMOps : Machine Learning Operations specifically focused on deploying and managing Large Language Models in production.

Logging : The practice of recording events, processes, and outputs in a system.

M

Microservices : An architectural style structuring an application as a collection of loosely coupled services.

Monitoring : The collection and analysis of data about system performance and behavior.

O

Observability : The ability to understand a system's internal state from its external outputs.

OpenShift : Red Hat's enterprise Kubernetes platform.

OpenTelemetry : Open-source observability framework for cloud-native software, combining metrics, traces, and logs.

P

Pipeline : An automated sequence of processes for delivering software from development to production.

Platform Engineering : The discipline of designing and building toolchains and workflows that enable self-service capabilities for software engineering organizations.

Pod : The smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes that can contain one or more containers.

R

RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) : A method of regulating access to resources based on roles of individual users.

Rolling Update : A deployment strategy that gradually replaces instances of the previous version with new versions.

S

SLA (Service Level Agreement) : A commitment between a service provider and client about aspects of the service like performance and availability.

SRE (Site Reliability Engineering) : A discipline that incorporates aspects of software engineering and applies them to infrastructure and operations problems.

SLSA (Supply Chain Levels for Software Artifacts) : Security framework for ensuring software supply chain integrity.

Service Mesh : Infrastructure layer for facilitating service-to-service communications between microservices.

T

Terraform : An open-source Infrastructure as Code software tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently.

Toil : Manual, repetitive, and automatable work that scales linearly as a system grows.

V

VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) : An isolated section of a cloud where you can launch resources in a defined virtual network.

Version Control : A system that records changes to files over time, enabling collaboration and rollback capabilities.

W

WebAssembly : Binary instruction format for stack-based virtual machines, enabling high-performance web applications.

Wasm : Shorthand for WebAssembly, used in edge computing and serverless contexts.

Z

Zero Downtime Deployment : A deployment practice ensuring that service remains available during updates.

Zero Trust : A security concept requiring strict verification for every person and device trying to access resources.