Cloud Technical Glossary
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| Term | Description |
|---|---|
| APACHE | A software for running a webserver |
| CALM/Cloud account lifecycle management | Cloud lifecycle management |
| CEPH | Distributed data storage platform, our standard storage software on the cloud |
| CEPHFS/CEPH File System | CEPH storage that can be mounted for e.g. data sharing on multiple instances/VMs |
| Compute Cloud | A flavour of instances/VMs which will be running for a limited time and may have high CPU/memory requirements during the entire lifespan |
| CVMFS | A distributed read-only content distribution system, often used for managing software |
| Dashboard | The web portal, named "Horizon" for our OpenStack clouds, for viewing and managing a user's cloud resources |
| Ephemeral disk | Virtual disk files, associated (and destroyed) with an instance/VM. |
| Flavour | The OpenStack term for defining the compute, memory, and storage capacity of a new instance/VM |
| Floating IP | An IP address that can be associated with an instance/VM to allow external access |
| FTP | An obsolete file transfer protocol (should not be used for new deployments) |
| Horizon | See "dashboard" |
| Host | The physical resources supporting an instance/VM |
| Image | Files which contain the contents of a virtual disk, often a base operating system in the creation of a volume or ephemeral disk |
| Instance | A virtual server in the cloud infrastructure. Also known as a Virtual Machine (VM) |
| IPV6/Internet Protocol Version 6 | Latest version of the internet protocol, increasing the number of available IP addresses for devices |
| Object Storage | Persistent storage space for large amounts of data. Typically read access only, e.g. images and data sets |
| OpenStack | The software suite used on Compute Canada clouds to control hardware resources such as computers, storage and networking |
| Persistent Cloud | An instance/VM anticipated to run indefinitely, such as web servers, database servers, etc. Typically has low or bursty CPU requirements |
| RAS/Rapid Access Service | Program allowing PI's to request and receive a given amount of Cloud resources |
| RAC/Resource Allocation Competition | Program via which PIs can request additional resources |
| S3/Simple Storage Service | A type of object storage |
| Security Group | A set of rules controlling network traffic to and from an instance/VM |
| Snapshot | A copy of a volume that can be used as a backup or to launch another instance/VM |
| SSL/Secure Sockets Layer | Protocol to allow encrypted communications over networks |
| SWIFT | Another type of object storage |
| Tenant | A group or user's allocation of cloud resources (now called a Project) |
| VCPU/Virtual central processing unit | An instance/VM can have one or more CPUs assigned to it, each of which is seen as a single physical CPU core by the operating system |
| VGPU/Virtual graphics processing unit | An instance/VM can have one or more VGPUs assigned to it |
| Volume | An allocation of storage resources that can be attached or detached to/from an instance/VM, exposed as a block device (a virtual disk) |
| VM/Virtual Machine | See "instance" |