Glossary

API

Application programming Interface, specifies how some software components should interact with each other.

Ceph

A free software storage platform designed to present object, block, and file storage from a single distributed cluster.

Cinder

Cinder is a Block Storage service for OpenStack.

CLI

Command-line interface is a means of interacting with a computer program where the user (or client) issues commands to the program in the form of successive lines of text (command lines).

COW

Copy-on-write is an optimization strategy used in computer programming.

DHCP

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is a standardized networking protocol used on Internet Protocol (IP) networks for dynamically distributing network configuration parameters, such as IP addresses for interfaces and services.

FOSS

Free, open-source software.

Galera

Galera Cluster is an easy-to-use, high-availability solution, which provides high system uptime, no data loss, and scalability for future growth.

GbE

Gigabiits per second Ethernet.

Glance

The OpenStack Glance project provides services for discovering, registering, and retrieving virtual machine images.

HAProxy

A free, fast and reliable solution offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications by spreading requests across multiple servers.

HPC

High Performance Computing most generally refers to the practice of aggregating computing power in a way that delivers much higher performance than one could get out of a typical desktop computer or workstation in order to solve large problems in science, engineering, or business.

HTTPS

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is a communications protocol for secure communication over a computer network, with especially wide deployment on the Internet.

IaaS

Infrastructure as a Service is a provision model in which an organization outsources the equipment used to support operations, including storage, hardware, servers and networking components.

Instance Type

A server-instance defines the resources for a virtual machine, meaning its RAM, core count, hard disk space.

JSON

JavaScript Object Notation is an open standard format that uses human-readable text to transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs.

keepalived

A routing software written in C, that provides simple but robust facilities for load balancing servers and a high-availability to Linux system and Linux based infrastructures.

LACP

Link aggregation control protocol, describe various methods of combining (aggregating) multiple network connections in parallel to increase throughput beyond what a single connection could sustain, and to provide redundancy in case one of the links fail.

LDAP

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network.

MLAG

The ability of two and sometimes more switches to act like a single switch when forming link bundles.

MySQL

An open-source relational database management system (RDBMS).

NAT

Network address translation is a methodology of modifying network address information in Internet Protocol (IP) datagram packet headers while they are in transit across a traffic routing device for the purpose of remapping one IP address space into another.

NIS

The Network Information Service (originally called Yellow Pages or YP) is a client–server directory service protocol for distributing system configuration data such as user and host names between computers on a computer network.

OAuth

An open standard for authorization. OAuth provides client applications a ‘secure delegated access’ to server resources on behalf of a resource owner.

OpenStack

A free and open-source software cloud computing platform, primarily deployed as an infrastructure-as-a-solution (IaaS) and released under the terms of the Apache License.

POD

Penguin Computing On Demand.

Python

A widely used general-purpose, high-level programming language.

RAM

Random-access memory is a form of computer data storage.

RBAC

Role-based Access Control is an approach to restricting system access to authorized users.

SCM

Scyld Cloud Manager.

server-instance

Synonymous with Virtual Machine. It is a virtualized compute resource comprised of an instance type and an image.

SGE

Sun Grid Engine is a grid computing computer cluster software system (otherwise known as batch-queuing system).

SMTP

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol is an Internet standard for email transmission.

SSH

A cryptographic network protocol for secure data communication, remote command-line login, remote command execution, and other secure network services between two networked computers.

UGE

Univa Grid Engine is a batch-queuing system, forked from Sun Grid Engine (SGE).

UUID

A universally unique identifier is an identifier standard used in software construction, standardized by the Open Software Foundation as part of the Distributed Computing Environment.

VIP

Virtual Internet Protocol address.