Glossary
Cloud terms, DevOps concepts and infrastructure technologies, clearly explained for IT decision-makers. Each entry covers what the term means, when it becomes relevant, and how it proves itself in practice.
A
API Gateway
An API Gateway is a central entry point for all API requests to your backend services. It handles routing, authentication, rate limiting, and monitoring at a single layer.
AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudFormation is the infrastructure-as-code service from AWS. You describe your entire infrastructure in templates and CloudFormation generates them automatically, reproducibly and traceably.
AWS Cost Optimisation
AWS cost optimisation encompasses strategies and tools for reducing cloud spending on Amazon Web Services, including right-sizing, Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, tagging, and automated resource management.
AWS IAM
AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management) controls who is authorised to do what in an AWS account. Identities and fine-grained authorisations are used to control access to each individual service.
AWS KMS
AWS KMS (Key Management Service) is the managed service for creating and managing cryptographic keys. It is used to encrypt data in AWS services centrally and traceably.
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda is a serverless service that executes individual code in response to events. You don't provision servers - AWS starts, scales and terminates the execution environment automatically.
AWS WAF
AWS WAF (Web Application Firewall) protects web applications from widespread attacks. It filters malicious requests before they reach the application.
Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora is a relational database engine developed by AWS, compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. It combines the familiarity of these engines with higher performance and a cloud-optimised storage architecture.
Amazon CloudFront
Amazon CloudFront is the content delivery network (CDN) from AWS. It delivers content via a global network of edge locations, thereby shortening loading times for users.
Amazon CloudWatch
Amazon CloudWatch is the monitoring service from AWS. It collects metrics, logs and events, displays them in dashboards and triggers alarms if thresholds are exceeded.
Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database. It delivers consistently low response times for almost any data volume and scales automatically with the load.
Amazon EC2
Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) provides virtual servers - known as instances - on demand in the AWS cloud. You rent computing power by the minute instead of procuring and operating your own hardware.
Amazon ECR
Amazon ECR (Elastic Container Registry) is the managed container registry from AWS. It stores, versions and scans Docker images that are obtained from ECS, EKS or CI/CD pipelines.
Amazon ECS & AWS Fargate
Amazon ECS is AWS' own container orchestration. In combination with AWS Fargate, containers run completely without server management - AWS provides the computing capacity per container.
Amazon EKS
Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) is the managed Kubernetes service from AWS. AWS operates the Kubernetes control plane, you focus on your containerised applications.
Amazon ElastiCache
Amazon ElastiCache is a managed in-memory cache service based on Redis or Memcached. It accelerates applications by storing frequently required data in the working memory.
Amazon RDS
Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) is the managed database service from AWS for relational databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL and MariaDB. AWS handles backups, patches and high availability.
Amazon Route 53
Amazon Route 53 is the managed DNS service from AWS. It translates domain names into IP addresses, manages domains and uses routing rules to control which server receives a request.
Amazon S3
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is an object storage system for almost unlimited amounts of data. Files are stored as objects in so-called buckets and made available with high availability via HTTPS.
Amazon VPC
Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) is the private, isolated network within AWS. You operate your servers and services in it with full control over IP ranges, subnets and access rules.
ArgoCD
ArgoCD is a declarative GitOps tool for Kubernetes that automatically synchronizes cluster states with Git repositories.
C
CDN
A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a globally distributed network of servers that delivers content like images, videos, and web pages closer to the user, drastically reducing load times.
CI/CD Pipeline
A CI/CD pipeline automates the process from code changes through build, test, and deployment to production delivery. CI stands for Continuous Integration, CD for Continuous Delivery or Deployment.
Canary Deployment
Canary Deployment is a release strategy where new versions are initially rolled out to a small percentage of users to detect risks early.
Cloud Migration
Cloud migration is the process of moving IT systems, data, and applications from on-premises infrastructure to a cloud environment, aiming for greater scalability, cost efficiency, and resilience.
Cloud-Native
Cloud-native describes an approach to building and deploying applications that fully exploit cloud advantages. Core technologies include containers, microservices, CI/CD, and declarative APIs.
Container Orchestration
Container orchestration automates deployment, scaling, and operation of containerized applications. It manages the lifecycle of hundreds of containers across multiple hosts.
Continuous Integration
Continuous Integration (CI) is the practice of integrating code changes into a shared branch multiple times daily and automatically building and testing them. This detects errors early and accelerates development.
D
DevSecOps
DevSecOps integrates security practices directly into the DevOps process. Instead of testing security at the end, it is embedded from the start in every phase of software development (Shift Left).
Docker
Docker is a container platform that packages applications with their dependencies into isolated, portable units. Your apps run identically everywhere – from laptop to cloud.
E
Edge Computing
Edge computing processes data decentrally near its source rather than in a central data center. This reduces latency, saves bandwidth, and enables real-time processing.
Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analytics engine enabling full-text search, log analysis, and real-time queries across large datasets.
F
FinOps
FinOps (Cloud Financial Operations) is a framework for optimising cloud costs through collaboration between engineering, finance, and business teams, maximising business value per cloud euro spent.
Flutter
Flutter is Google's open-source framework for cross-platform app development from a single Dart codebase for iOS, Android, web, and desktop.
H
Helm Charts
Helm Charts are packages for Kubernetes applications that bundle all required resource definitions. They enable reproducible, versioned deployments with configurable parameters.
Horizontal Pod Autoscaler
The Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) automatically scales the number of pods in Kubernetes based on CPU, memory, or custom metrics.
I
Infrastructure as Code
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the practice of managing IT infrastructure through machine-readable configuration files rather than manual processes, enabling reproducible, versioned, and automated infrastructure provisioning.
Ingress Controller
An Ingress Controller manages external HTTP/HTTPS access to services in a Kubernetes cluster through rule-based routing.
L
Lift and Shift
Lift and shift refers to migrating applications to the cloud without fundamental architectural changes. The application is "lifted" and "shifted" to the cloud – fast but not optimized.
Load Balancing
Load Balancing distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers or pods to ensure availability, performance, and scalability.
M
Managed Kubernetes
Managed Kubernetes is a cloud service where the provider manages the Kubernetes control plane. You focus on your workloads while the provider handles updates, patches, and availability.
Microservices
Microservices are an architectural style where applications are divided into small, independently deployable services. Each service has a clearly defined responsibility and communicates via APIs.
Monitoring
Monitoring is the systematic observation of IT systems, applications, and infrastructure. It collects metrics, detects anomalies, and alerts on problems – the foundation for stable operations.
Multi-Cloud
Multi-Cloud refers to using multiple cloud providers in parallel to avoid vendor lock-in and combine the strengths of different platforms.
P
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL is a powerful, open-source relational database system with advanced SQL compliance, JSONB support, and proven data reliability.
Prometheus & Grafana
Prometheus collects metrics as time series, Grafana visualizes them in dashboards – together they form the standard stack for Kubernetes monitoring.
S
SLA / SLO / SLI
SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs define availability commitments, internal targets, and measurable indicators for IT service reliability.
Secrets Management
Secrets Management covers the secure storage, rotation, and access control of sensitive data such as API keys, passwords, and certificates in IT systems.
Service Mesh
A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that manages communication between microservices. It handles traffic management, security, and observability transparently for the application.
Shopware 6
Shopware 6 is a flexible, API-first e-commerce platform from Germany, ideal for B2B and B2C shops in mid-market companies.
Spot Instances
Spot Instances are unused cloud capacities offered at significantly reduced prices – ideal for fault-tolerant workloads and batch processing.
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