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Kubernetes & Cloud Native Glossary

Getting started with Kubernetes is not an easy task, and the last thing you need to worry about is terminology. Our Kubernetes glossary is a dictionary of the terminology used in the Kubernetes space, defined in the context of cloud native applications.

A

API

An API, or Application Programming Interface, is an interface that allows applications to communicate with one another, with other ...

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Application Modernization

Application modernization is the process of taking legacy applications on older platforms and updating their platform and architect...

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Application Performance Monitoring (APM)

Application Performance Monitoring is a set of tools and practices to introspect and diagnose large complex application performance...

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Authentication

Authentication is the verification of identity. Today's applications control access to sensitive data that should only be exposed t...

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C

Canary Release

A canary release is a strategy for incrementally releasing new versions of an application or service to a subset of users to mitiga...

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Circuit Breaker

The circuit breaker pattern is a resilience pattern to prevent cascade failure. In a distributed system, the failure of one compone...

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Cloud Native

Cloud-native is an approach to building and running applications that utilize cloud computing benefits through containerization, mi...

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Container

A container is a self-contained software artifact that includes an application and all the dependencies necessary for the applicati...

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Container Registry

A container registry is a central repository for container images. Popular public container registries include Amazon Elastic Conta...

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Continuous Delivery

Continuous delivery is the technique of being able to easily and quickly release software changes to end users. Continuous delivery...

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Control Plane

The control plane is a management layer that applies a consistent set of policies to a distributed data plane. Application network ...

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Custom Resource Definition

A Custom Resource Definition (CRD) is a way to extend the Kubernetes API for use cases that are not directly covered by core Kubern...

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D

Data Plane

The data plane is a layer of service proxies that manage application-level network traffic. Data plane typically operate on Layer 7...

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DevOps

DevOps is a philosophy in which development and operations teams work together in a rapid cycle of building, testing, and deploying...

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Distributed Tracing

Distributed tracing is a technique for troubleshooting and profiling distributed microservices applications. In a microservices arc...

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Docker

Docker is a suite of tools that allows the packaging, distribution, and deployment of software applications as containers. In the c...

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E

Envoy Proxy

Envoy Proxy is a modern, high performance, small footprint edge and service proxy. Envoy is most comparable to software load balanc...

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F

Full Cycle Development

Full cycle development is a software development methodology where a development team owns the full software development lifecycle,...

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G

GitOps

GitOps is an operating model for cloud-native applications built on the principle that the source of truth for an entire applicatio...

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Glossary - Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open-source container management system widely used for running cloud applications. Originally developed by Google...

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gRPC

gRPC is a high performance, polyglot RPC protocol and framework built on HTTP/2 and Protocol Buffers. Designed for applications tha...

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gZip Compression

Gzip compression is a technique for minimizing bandwidth in communication through compression. Gzip compression can improve network...

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H

HTTP

HTTP is an application protocol for data exchange that relies on a request/response model. Due to its nature as the foundational pr...

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Header Propagation

Header Propagation, also referred to as Context Propagation, is the technique by which context is transferred across services and r...

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High Availability

High availability is a principle of software or an application maintaining functionality or “staying up” despite interruptions. Com...

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I

Identity Provider (IDP)

An Identity Provider is a trusted system or service that manages and verifies identity information. A typical identity provider, or...

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Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Identity and Access Management is about defining and enforcing policies to ensure the right individuals, through their digital iden...

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Ingress Controller

An ingress controller is a Kubernetes application that can process routing rules according to the Kubernetes ingress specification....

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Istio

Istio is an open source service mesh built on Envoy Proxy. Originally created by IBM and Google, Istio provides a broad set of serv...

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iptables

is a utility in the user-space where a root user can configure a set of table rules for the Linux kernel firewall. iptables allow...

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J

JWT

JSON Web Tokens, or JWTs, are a standard way for securely representing claims. A JWT consists of a digitally signed payload. The mo...

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K

Kube-proxy

Kube-proxy is the routing layer used by Kubernetes to route traffic between nodes in a cluster. Built on iptables, kube-proxy opera...

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Kubectl

Kubectl is the command line interface that developers and operators use to interact with the Kubernetes API. Kubectl connects to th...

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kubernetes API Gateway

A Kubernetes API Gateway is an intermediary layer within a Kubernetes environment that manages communication between clients and mi...

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L

Layer 7

Layer 7 is the application-level communication layer in the OSI network model. In networking, communication between services happen...

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Load Balancer

A load balancer is a traffic management implementation that optimizes resource use by distributing network traffic across different...

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M

Microservices

A microservices is a software module that is developed, deployed, and released independently. Multiple microservices, working toget...

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Monolith

A monolith is a single, standalone application that is deployed as a single unit. Monoliths were a dominant application architectur...

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Multi-Cluster

Multi-cluster is an architecture strategy for deploying a cloud native application on or across multiple Kubernetes clusters. Multi...

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N

Node

A Kubernetes node is a physical or virtual machine that runs containerized workloads. A Kubernetes cluster consists of multiple nod...

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NodePort

A NodePort is a way to enable Kubernetes services to receive traffic from outside the cluster. In a NodePort, the Kubernetes API se...

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O

OAuth

OAuth is an open standard and protocol for authentication on the Internet.The OAuth protocol enables Single Sign-On use cases, wher...

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OIDC

OpenID Connect (OIDC) is an authentication layer that enables web applications to authenticate users without storing and managing c...

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Observability

Observability is the ability for a system to provide data into the behavior of systems, along with the context with which to analyz...

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P

Pod

Pods are the basic compute deployment unit in Kubernetes. Pods consist of one or more containers. All containers on the pod are man...

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Progressive Delivery

Progressive delivery is a software development practice that emphasizes incrementally releasing features to end users. By increment...

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Proxy

A proxy is an intermediary between a source (typically, a client) and a destination (typically, a server-based application). When a...

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R

Rate Limiting

Rate limiting is a technique used to control the amount of incoming and outgoing traffic to or from a network, or the amount of dat...

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Resilience

Resilience is the ability for an application to maintain operational status and acceptable service to users despite faults, errors,...

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S

Self-Service

Self-service is an operating model for infrastructure software focused on empowering application developers to safely make infrastr...

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Server Name Indication

Server Name Indication, or SNI, is an extension to the TLS protocol that allows a single server to securely host multiple domains. ...

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Serverless

Serverless is a computing model where code is directly deployed on compute resources in a way that is abstracted from the developer...

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Service Catalog

A Service Catalog is a centralized portal for tracking microservices. With access to a Service Catalog, developers get an integrate...

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Service Discovery

Service discovery is how applications and (micro)services locate each other on a network. Service discovery implementations include...

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Service Mesh

A service mesh is a network layer that secures, manages and observes application-level communication. In a service mesh deployment,...

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Session Affinity

Session affinity is a load balancing technique that recognizes and links an HTTP request from an end user with their application in...

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T

Traffic Shadowing

Traffic shadowing is a routing strategy whereby incoming requests are duplicated and sent to two different destinations. Also calle...

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Transport Layer Security (TLS)

Transport Layer Security, or TLS, is a network protocol that secures network communication. Websites use HTTP over TLS ("HTTPS") to...

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V

Version 0

Version 0 is a development technique that involves shipping an end-to-end development and deployment workflow as the first mileston...

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Virtual Machine

A virtual machine is a software computer that simulates a physical machine. Virtual machines are designed to be indistinguishable f...

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Y

YAML

YAML is a common, human readable language for configuration. Defined as a recursive acronym "YAML Ain’t Markup Language," YAML is t...

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