Devops Glossary

Browse 93 devops terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

93 Devops Terms

Ansible
Ansible is an open-source automation tool used for configuration management, application deployment, and infrastructure provisioning. Built on Python and...
ArgoCD
A declarative GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes that keeps cluster state synchronized with Git repositories. ArgoCD watches Git repos containing...
Automate All the Things
A meme-like slogan expressing the desire to automate every repetitive or manual task in a workflow, often with both enthusiasm and irony. It reflects a real...
Auto-scaling
The automatic adjustment of compute resources — adding or removing server instances, containers, or function invocations — in response to real-time demand...
Bash
The Bourne Again Shell, the default command-line interpreter on most Linux distributions and macOS. Bash scripts are the glue of Unix system administration,...
blast radius
The scope of impact when a failure, misconfiguration, or security breach occurs — how many users, services, or systems are affected. Good architecture...
blue-green deployment
A deployment strategy that maintains two identical production environments: 'blue' (current live) and 'green' (new version). Traffic is switched from blue to...
Blue-Green Deployment
Blue-green deployment is a release strategy that maintains two identical production environments, labeled blue and green. At any time, one environment serves...
canary release
A deployment strategy where a new version is rolled out to a small subset of users or servers first, then gradually expanded if metrics look healthy. Named...
Chef
An infrastructure automation and configuration-management platform used to define system state as code.
CI/CD
CI/CD stands for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (or Continuous Delivery). Continuous Integration is the practice of automatically building...
CI/CD Meme
A joke or recurring online trope about continuous integration and continuous delivery, usually focused on flaky pipelines, overengineered deployment tooling,...
CI/CD Pipeline
The automated sequence of steps that code goes through from commit to production — build, test, security scan, staging deployment, and production release. A...
Config as Code
Managing configuration in version-controlled code files rather than through manual UI changes or scripts. If it's not in version control, it doesn't exist...
configuration drift
The gradual divergence of a system's actual configuration from its intended or documented state, typically caused by ad-hoc manual changes, hotfixes applied...
Container
A container is a lightweight, standalone executable package that bundles application code with everything needed to run: runtime, system tools, libraries, and...
Container Image
A Container Image is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
Containerization
Containerization is the practice of packaging an application with its dependencies, libraries, configuration, and runtime into a lightweight, portable unit...
Container Network
A Container Network is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
Container Orchestration
A Container Orchestration is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make...
Container Registry
A Container Registry is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
Container Runtime
A Container Runtime is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
Continuous Delivery
A Continuous Delivery is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
Continuous Deployment
Continuous Deployment (CD) is a practice where every code change that passes automated testing is automatically released to production without manual approval....
Continuous Integration
Continuous Integration (CI) is a development practice where developers merge their code changes into a shared repository frequently, ideally multiple times per...
Coolify
An open-source, self-hosted alternative to platforms like Vercel, Netlify, and Heroku. Coolify lets developers deploy applications, databases, and services on...
CPU Pipeline
A CPU Pipeline is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code easier...
CSS Container Query
A CSS Container Query is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
dark launch
A deployment technique where new code is released to production and executed in the background without exposing results to users. Dark launches allow teams to...
Deployment
The process of releasing and installing software to a target environment — development, staging, or production — making it available to users.
Deployment Slot
A Deployment Slot is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
Deployment Strategy
A Deployment Strategy is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
Deploy Pipeline
A Deploy Pipeline is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
Dev Container
A Dev Container is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
DevContainer
A DevContainer is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code easier...
DevOps Engineer
An engineer focused on the systems, tooling, and processes that connect software development and operations, such as CI/CD, infrastructure, observability, and...
distributed tracing
A method of tracking requests as they propagate through distributed systems by assigning each request a unique trace ID that follows it across service...
Docker
Docker is a platform for building, shipping, and running applications inside lightweight, isolated environments called containers. A container packages an...
Docker Compose
A Docker Compose is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
Dockerfile
A Dockerfile is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code easier...
Docker Image
A Docker Image is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code easier...
Docker Network
A Docker Network is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
Docker Registry
A Docker Registry is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
Docker Swarm
A Docker Swarm is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code easier...
Docker Volume
A Docker Volume is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
Environment Variable
A key-value pair set in the operating system's environment that configures application behavior without code changes. Used for secrets (API keys), feature...
error budget
The acceptable amount of unreliability for a service over a given period, calculated as 1 minus the SLO. A service with a 99.9% availability SLO has a 0.1%...
GitOps
An operational framework where the desired state of infrastructure is declared in a Git repository, and automated processes continuously reconcile the actual...
Google Cloud Run
A Google Cloud Run is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
Groovy
A dynamic language for the JVM designed as a companion to Java, offering concise syntax, closures, and built-in support for working with XML, JSON, and...
Helm
The de facto package manager for Kubernetes, using templated YAML files called 'charts' to define, install, and upgrade applications. Helm charts bundle...
Helm Template
A Helm Template is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code...
IaaS
Infrastructure as a Service — a cloud computing model where virtualized computing resources (servers, storage, networking) are provided on demand over the...
Image
In containerization, a lightweight, standalone, read-only template containing an application and all its dependencies, from which containers are instantiated....
immutable infrastructure
An infrastructure management approach where servers are never modified after deployment — any change requires building a new server image and replacing the old...
Incident Management
The process of detecting, responding to, mitigating, and learning from production incidents. Includes on-call rotations, runbooks, war rooms, status pages,...
infrastructure as code
The practice of managing and provisioning infrastructure (servers, networks, databases) through machine-readable definition files rather than manual processes...
Infrastructure as Code Culture
A working style that treats infrastructure changes like software changes, with version control, review, reproducibility, and automation as norms.
Integration
An Integration is a development concept used to shape how software is built, executed, or maintained in real systems. Developers rely on it to make code easier...
Istio
An open-source service mesh platform that provides traffic management, security, and observability for microservices running on Kubernetes. Istio deploys an...
Kubernetes operator
A method of packaging, deploying, and managing a Kubernetes application using custom resources and custom controllers that encode operational knowledge into...
Metrics Collection
The practice of instrumenting applications and infrastructure to emit quantitative measurements — such as request latency, error rates, CPU usage, and queue...
Migration
A versioned change to a database schema — adding tables, modifying columns, creating indices. Applied sequentially to evolve the database alongside the code....
MLOps
A set of practices combining machine learning, DevOps, and data engineering to reliably deploy and maintain ML systems in production. MLOps covers the full...
Monitoring
Monitoring is the practice of continuously collecting, aggregating, and analyzing metrics, logs, and health signals from applications and infrastructure to...
Observability
Observability is the ability to understand a system's internal state by examining its external outputs, primarily through three pillars: logs (event records),...
Orchestration
Orchestration is the automated coordination, configuration, and management of multiple services, containers, or infrastructure components so they function as a...
Package Registry
A centralized or federated server that hosts versioned packages and their metadata, serving as the source that package managers query when resolving and...
postmortem
A structured document written after an incident that analyzes what happened, why, and how to prevent recurrence. Good postmortems are blameless (focusing on...
PowerShell
Microsoft's task automation framework and command-line shell, built on .NET and designed around the concept of passing objects (not text) between commands....
Process Manager
A daemon or tool that starts, monitors, and restarts application processes, ensuring they stay running and are properly managed. Examples include systemd, PM2...
Production Environment
The live infrastructure — servers, databases, CDNs, and services — where the application serves real users and processes real data, as distinguished from...
Release Management
The discipline of planning, scheduling, coordinating, and governing the delivery of software releases — encompassing version numbering, changelog generation,...
Risk Assessment Dev
The practice of systematically identifying, analyzing, and prioritizing technical risks in a software project — such as architectural bottlenecks, dependency...
runbook
A documented set of step-by-step procedures for handling specific operational scenarios, from routine maintenance tasks to incident response. Runbooks reduce...
Secret
A sensitive credential — such as an API key, database password, TLS certificate private key, or OAuth token — that must be protected from unauthorized access...
Self-Hosting
Running software on your own infrastructure rather than using a managed cloud service, or — in compiler theory — the milestone where a compiler is capable of...
Seq
A centralized structured logging server that ingests, indexes, and lets you query application logs with a rich filter syntax, popular in the .NET ecosystem.
service mesh
A dedicated infrastructure layer that handles service-to-service communication in microservice architectures, implemented as a network of lightweight proxies...
Shell Script
A text file containing a sequence of shell commands (typically Bash) that are executed in order by the shell interpreter, used to automate system...
sidecar
A deployment pattern where a helper container runs alongside the main application container in the same pod, providing auxiliary functionality like logging,...
SLI
Service Level Indicator — a carefully chosen metric that quantitatively measures some aspect of a service's reliability, such as request latency, error rate,...
SLO
Service Level Objective — a target value or range for a service's reliability, expressed as a percentage (e.g., 99.9% availability). SLOs provide a...
Staging Environment
A pre-production environment that mirrors the production infrastructure as closely as possible — same services, configuration, and (ideally) anonymized...
Supervisor
A process or component responsible for monitoring, starting, stopping, and restarting other processes, ensuring system resilience — central to Erlang/OTP's...
Task Runner
A tool that automates repetitive development tasks — such as compiling code, running tests, linting, or bundling assets — by defining named tasks with...
Terraform
Terraform is an open-source infrastructure-as-code tool created by HashiCorp that lets you define, provision, and manage cloud resources using declarative...
Test Environment
An isolated deployment — separate from production and often from development — where the application and its dependencies (databases, queues, third-party...
toil
Repetitive, manual, automatable operational work that scales linearly with service size and provides no enduring value. Google's SRE framework defines toil...
Toolchain
The ordered set of development tools that work together to transform source code into a deployable artifact — typically including a compiler or transpiler,...
twelve-factor app
A methodology for building software-as-a-service applications, defining twelve principles including storing config in environment variables, treating backing...
Vagrant
A HashiCorp tool that automates the creation and provisioning of reproducible virtual machine environments using a declarative Vagrantfile. It wraps providers...
Virtual Device
A software-emulated hardware device presented to a virtual machine or operating system as if it were physical hardware. Examples include virtio network cards,...

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