Cloud-Native Technologies

Ansible

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

API Gateway

A server that acts as an API front-end, handling requests, enforcing policies, and routing to appropriate back-end services.

Argo CD

A declarative, GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes.

Autoscaling

A method to automatically adjust the number of compute resources based on load or other metrics to ensure optimal performance and cost-efficiency.

Blue-Green Deployment

A deployment strategy that reduces downtime and risk by running two identical production environments: Blue (current) and Green (new).

Canary Deployment

A deployment strategy that releases new features to a small subset of users to reduce risk before rolling out to the entire infrastructure.

CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment)

A set of practices to automate code integration, testing, and deployment, enhancing software delivery speed and reliability.

Cilium

An open-source networking and security tool for containers and microservices, providing network visibility, security, and load balancing.

Circuit Breaker

A pattern used to detect failures and encapsulate the logic of preventing a failure from constantly recurring during maintenance, temporary external system failure, or unexpected system difficulties.

Cluster

A set of servers working together to provide higher availability, scalability, and reliability for applications.

ConfigMap

A Kubernetes API object that lets you store configuration data as key-value pairs, which can be consumed by your application containers.

Container

A lightweight, portable, and self-sufficient environment that includes an application and its dependencies, enabling consistent execution across different computing environments.

Container Orchestration

The automated management of containerized applications, including deployment, scaling, and operation. Kubernetes is the most popular tool for this.

CRD (Custom Resource Definition)

An API extension in Kubernetes that allows you to create custom resources beyond the built-in types.

CSI (Container Storage Interface)

An industry-standard API that enables Kubernetes to use storage systems from multiple vendors.

DaemonSet

A Kubernetes workload API object that ensures a copy of a pod runs on all (or some) nodes in the cluster.

DevOps

A set of practices that combine software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten the development lifecycle while delivering features, fixes, and updates frequently in close alignment with business objectives.

Docker

An open-source platform used to develop, ship, and run applications inside containers.

Envoy

An open-source edge and service proxy designed for cloud-native applications. It can be used as a sidecar proxy in a service mesh.

Etcd

A distributed key-value store used as Kubernetes’ backing store for all cluster data.

Flannel

An open-source virtual network that gives a subnet to each host for use with Kubernetes.

Fluentd

An open-source data collector for unified logging. It can collect logs from various sources, process them, and forward them to different destinations.

GitOps

A model for implementing continuous deployment for cloud-native applications. It uses Git repositories as the source of truth for declarative infrastructure and applications.

Helm

A package manager for Kubernetes that simplifies deployment and management of applications using charts, which are collections of Kubernetes resource files.

Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA)

A Kubernetes API resource that automatically adjusts the number of pod replicas in a deployment based on observed CPU utilization or other custom metrics.

Ingress

A Kubernetes API object that manages external access to services within a cluster, typically HTTP and HTTPS.

Ingress Controller

A Kubernetes resource that manages external access to services within a cluster, typically HTTP and HTTPS.

Istio

An open-source service mesh that provides a uniform way to connect, manage, and secure microservices. It includes features like traffic management, security, and observability.

Jaeger

An open-source tool for tracing and monitoring microservices. It helps in performance optimization and root cause analysis.

Jenkins

An open-source automation server used to implement CI/CD workflows.

JSON Web Token (JWT)

A compact, URL-safe means of representing claims to be transferred between two parties, often used for authentication and authorization.

Kafka

An open-source distributed event streaming platform capable of handling high-throughput, fault-tolerant, real-time data feeds.

Kibana

An open-source data visualization and exploration tool used for log and time-series analytics, application monitoring, and operational intelligence.

Kubectl

The command-line tool for interacting with Kubernetes clusters.

Kubeflow

An open-source toolkit for machine learning on Kubernetes, designed to make deployments of machine learning workflows simple, portable, and scalable.

Kubelet

The primary node agent that runs on each node in a Kubernetes cluster. It ensures containers are running in a Pod.

Kubernetes

An open-source platform designed to automate deploying, scaling, and operating application containers. It manages containerized applications across a cluster of nodes.

Kubernetes Liveness Probe

One of three types of Kubernetes probes, the liveness probe is a health check that determines whether or not a container within the Kubernetes environment is running in a healthy state.

Kubernetes Readiness Probe

One of three types of Kubernetes probes, the readiness probe is a health check that determines whether or not a container within the Kubernetes environment is ready to receive traffic.

Kustomize

A configuration management tool that lets you customize raw, template-free YAML files for multiple purposes, leaving the original YAML untouched and usable as is.

Linkerd

An open-source service mesh for Kubernetes that provides observability, reliability, and security for microservices.

Loki

A horizontally scalable, highly available log aggregation system inspired by Prometheus.

Longhorn

An open-source distributed block storage system for Kubernetes.

Microservices

An architectural style that structures an application as a collection of small, autonomous services modeled around a business domain.

Meshery

A multi-service mesh management plane offering lifecycle, configuration, and performance management of service meshes and their workloads.

Metrics Server

A scalable, efficient source of container resource metrics for Kubernetes built-in autoscaling pipelines.

Minikube

A tool that runs a single-node Kubernetes cluster on your local machine.

Multi-Tenancy

A software architecture where a single instance of software serves multiple tenants, allowing for shared resources with isolated data.

Namespace

A Kubernetes abstraction used to support multiple virtual clusters on the same physical cluster. It helps in resource allocation, access control, and organization.

NATS

A connective technology powering modern distributed systems, serving as a simple, secure, and high-performance publish-subscribe, distributed queueing, and RPC messaging system.

Node

A worker machine in Kubernetes, either a virtual or physical machine, that runs containerized applications managed by the master components.

Open Policy Agent (OPA)

An open-source policy engine that unifies policy enforcement across the stack, often used in Kubernetes for admission control.

OpenShift

A family of containerization software developed by Red Hat. It is an enterprise Kubernetes container platform with integrated DevOps capabilities.

OpenTelemetry

An open-source observability framework for cloud-native software. It provides APIs and instrumentation for distributed tracing, metrics, and logging.

OpenTracing

A vendor-neutral API for distributed tracing, which helps in monitoring and troubleshooting microservices-based applications.

Persistent Volume (PV)

a storage unit in the cluster that has been dynamically or manually provisioned using Storage Classes. PVs are resources in the cluster just like a node is a cluster resource.

Persistent Volume Claim (PVC)

A request for storage by a user. It is similar to a pod in that pods consume node resources and PVCs consume PV resources.

Pod

The smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes, representing a single instance of a running process in a cluster. Pods can contain one or more containers.

Pod Disruption Budget (PDB)

A Kubernetes object that specifies the minimum number or percentage of replicas that must remain available during voluntary disruptions.

PodSecurityPolicy (PSP)

A Kubernetes resource that controls security-sensitive aspects of the pod specification and ensures pod compliance with cluster policies.

Prometheus

An open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit optimized for containerized environments.

Rancher

An open-source software platform that enables organizations to run and manage Kubernetes at scale.

ReplicaSet

A Kubernetes API object that ensures a specified number of pod replicas are running at any given time.

Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)

A method of regulating access to computer or network resources based on the roles of individual users within an enterprise.

Rolling Update

A deployment strategy that gradually replaces old versions of an application with new ones, minimizing downtime and ensuring availability.

Rook

An open-source cloud-native storage orchestrator for Kubernetes.

Secret

A Kubernetes object that stores sensitive information such as passwords, OAuth tokens, and SSH keys.

Service

A Kubernetes abstraction that defines a logical set of pods and a policy by which to access them, usually defined by a selector.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

A commitment between a service provider and a client that defines the level of service expected from the service provider.

Service Level Objective (SLO)

A key element of a service level agreement (SLA) between a service provider and a customer, providing a specific metric and a target value.

Service Mesh

A dedicated infrastructure layer for handling service-to-service communication, enabling secure, fast, and reliable communication in microservices architectures. Examples include Istio and Linkerd.

Sidecar Pattern

A microservices design pattern where a secondary container runs alongside the primary container in a pod, providing additional functionality such as logging or monitoring.

StatefulSet

A Kubernetes workload API object used to manage stateful applications. It ensures that the deployment and scaling of a set of Pods occur in a predictable and ordered manner.

Sysdig

A monitoring, security, and troubleshooting tool for modern cloud infrastructures.

Taints and Tolerations

Mechanisms in Kubernetes used to control which Pods can be scheduled on which nodes. Taints are applied to nodes, and tolerations are applied to Pods.

Tekton

An open-source framework for creating CI/CD systems, allowing developers to build, test, and deploy across cloud providers and on-premise systems.

Thanos

An open-source, highly available Prometheus setup with long-term storage capabilities.

Tiller

A server component of Helm that runs inside the Kubernetes cluster and manages releases of Helm charts.

Tracing

A method of following a request from start to end through multiple systems, helping in diagnosing performance issues and errors in microservices.

Vault

A tool for securely accessing secrets. It provides a unified interface to any secret while providing tight access control and recording a detailed audit log.

Virtual Kubelet

An open-source Kubernetes kubelet implementation that masquerades as a kubelet for the purposes of connecting Kubernetes to other APIs. This allows Kubernetes to schedule pods in environments like serverless platforms.

Volume

A directory containing data, accessible to the containers in a Pod. Kubernetes supports several types of volumes, including persistent volumes, hostPath volumes, and more.

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

A private network in the cloud, offering isolated network resources that can be managed and controlled by the user.

Vitess

An open-source database clustering system for horizontal scaling of MySQL.

Weave Net

A software network overlay for connecting containers across multiple hosts.

Webhook

A method of augmenting or altering the behavior of a web application with custom callbacks.

Workload

An application running on Kubernetes, usually defined by a set of deployments, services, and other Kubernetes resources.

Zero Trust

A security model that assumes no trust by default, verifying every request as though it originates from an open network.

Zookeeper

An open-source distributed coordination service for managing large sets of hosts.