# 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.
