Terms worth knowing before you step into the work.
Use this as a practical reference, not a dictionary for its own sake. If you keep seeing a term across cloud, DevOps, Kubernetes, or platform engineering, it should make sense quickly here.
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33 terms
What are DORA Metrics?
DORA Metrics are four research-backed measures of software delivery performance: Deployment Frequency, Lead Time for Changes, Change Failure Rate, and Time to Restore Service. Learn what they measure and how elite teams score.
What is a Canary Deployment?
A canary deployment routes a small percentage of live traffic to a new version before rolling it out fully. Learn how it works, how it compares to blue-green deployments, and how to implement it in Kubernetes.
What is a Kubernetes Deployment?
A Kubernetes Deployment manages the desired state of your application pods - how many replicas run, how updates roll out, and how to roll back if something goes wrong. Learn the Deployment, ReplicaSet, and Pod hierarchy with a full YAML example.
What is a Kubernetes Pod? The Smallest Deployable Unit Explained
A Kubernetes pod is the smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes - a wrapper around one or more containers that share a network and storage. Learn how pods work, when to use multiple containers in a pod, and what happens when a pod crashes.
What is a Load Balancer?
A load balancer distributes incoming traffic across multiple servers or pods to prevent any single instance from being overwhelmed. Learn L4 vs L7 load balancing, AWS ALB vs NLB, health checks, and how to provision one with Terraform.
What is a Microservices Architecture?
Microservices decompose an application into small, independently deployable services. Learn the trade-offs versus monoliths, how services communicate, and when microservices are the wrong choice.
What is a Service Mesh?
A service mesh handles service-to-service communication in a microservices architecture - providing mTLS encryption, traffic management, and observability without any application code changes.
What is Amazon EKS?
Amazon EKS is AWS's managed Kubernetes service. It runs the Kubernetes control plane for you, handles upgrades and patching, and integrates with IAM, VPC, and other AWS services. Learn when to use EKS vs self-managed Kubernetes.
What is an SLO, SLI, and SLA?
SLIs measure service behaviour, SLOs set targets for that behaviour, and SLAs are the contractual commitments to customers. Learn the distinctions, how error budgets work, and what these mean for on-call teams.
What is Ansible? Configuration Management Explained
Ansible automates the configuration of servers, application deployments, and infrastructure tasks using simple YAML files called playbooks - no agents required on managed hosts. Learn how it works and where it fits in a modern DevOps stack.
What is ArgoCD? GitOps CD for Kubernetes Explained
ArgoCD is a declarative continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes that automatically syncs your cluster to match the desired state stored in a Git repository. Learn how it works, how to get started, and how it compares to Flux.
What is Blue-Green Deployment?
Blue-green deployment runs two identical production environments and switches traffic between them for zero-downtime releases. Learn the pattern, database migration challenges, and a real Kubernetes example.
What is Chaos Engineering?
Chaos engineering deliberately injects failures into production systems to discover weaknesses before incidents do. Learn the principles, common tools, and how to run your first GameDay safely.
What is Cloud Native?
Cloud native is an approach to building software that takes full advantage of cloud infrastructure - using containers, microservices, CI/CD, and orchestration to deliver resilient, scalable applications. Learn what it means in practice.
What is Containerization? Docker and Containers Explained
Containerization packages an application and its dependencies into a portable, isolated unit that runs consistently across environments. Learn how Docker containers work, why they replaced VMs for many workloads, and how they fit into DevOps.
What is DevSecOps? Security Built Into the Pipeline
DevSecOps integrates security practices directly into the CI/CD pipeline. Learn what shift-left security means in practice, which tools scan for vulnerabilities, and how to add Trivy container scanning to GitHub Actions.
What is Docker? Containers Explained for Beginners
Docker packages your application and its dependencies into a portable container that runs consistently across any environment. Learn how it works, why engineers use it, and how it compares to virtual machines.
What is FinOps? Cloud Cost Management for DevOps Engineers
FinOps is a discipline for managing cloud costs with the same rigour applied to system reliability. Learn the FinOps lifecycle, tagging strategies, Reserved Instances vs Spot, and the tools DevOps engineers use to control infrastructure spend.
What is GitHub Actions? CI/CD Workflows Explained
GitHub Actions is a hosted CI/CD platform built into GitHub. Learn how workflow YAML syntax works, how to structure jobs and steps, and how to build a real deployment pipeline with matrix builds and secrets.
What is GitOps? Git-Driven Infrastructure Explained
GitOps uses Git as the single source of truth for infrastructure and application configuration. Changes go through pull requests, and automated operators sync the running cluster to match what is in the repo. Learn how it works and why teams adopt it.
What is Grafana? Dashboards and Visualisation Explained
Grafana is an open-source observability platform that turns time-series data into interactive dashboards. Learn how it works, how it connects to Prometheus, and when to use it.
What is HashiCorp Packer?
HashiCorp Packer automates the creation of identical machine images - AMIs, VM images, Docker images - from a single source configuration. Learn how it enables immutable infrastructure and how it fits into a Packer + Terraform workflow.
What is HashiCorp Vault?
HashiCorp Vault is a secrets management tool that stores, generates, and controls access to tokens, passwords, certificates, and encryption keys. Learn how it works, how dynamic secrets differ from static ones, and how to integrate Vault into a CI/CD pipeline.
What is Helm? Kubernetes Package Manager Explained
Helm is the package manager for Kubernetes. It bundles Kubernetes manifests into versioned, configurable charts that can be installed, upgraded, and rolled back with a single command. Learn how Helm works and when to use it.
What is Jenkins? CI/CD Automation Explained
Jenkins is an open-source automation server that powers CI/CD pipelines for thousands of engineering teams. Learn how Jenkinsfiles work, when Jenkins is the right tool, and how it compares to GitHub Actions.
What is Kubernetes? Container Orchestration Explained
Kubernetes automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications across a cluster of machines. Learn how it works, its core concepts, and why it has become the standard for running containers in production.
What is MLOps? Machine Learning Operations Explained
MLOps applies DevOps principles to machine learning: versioning data and models, automating training pipelines, and deploying models reliably. Learn what MLOps is, how it differs from DevOps, and what tools are used.
What is Observability? Monitoring vs Observability Explained
Observability is the ability to understand what is happening inside a system by examining its outputs. Learn how it differs from monitoring, what the three pillars are, and what tools DevOps teams use.
What is Platform Engineering? Internal Developer Platforms Explained
Platform engineering is the discipline of building self-service internal developer platforms (IDPs) that let application teams ship faster without managing infrastructure. Learn what it is and how it differs from DevOps.
What is Prometheus? Monitoring and Alerting Explained
Prometheus is an open-source monitoring system that collects time-series metrics from your applications and infrastructure, stores them in a built-in database, and evaluates alerting rules. Learn how it works, how PromQL queries data, and how it pairs with Grafana.
What is Serverless Computing? Functions, Cold Starts, and Trade-offs
Serverless lets you run code without managing servers. Learn how AWS Lambda works, what cold starts cost you, when serverless is the right choice, and when it becomes a trap.
What is Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)?
Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is a discipline that applies software engineering to operations problems. Learn what SREs do, how SRE differs from DevOps, and what error budgets are.
What is Terraform? Infrastructure as Code Explained
Terraform lets you define cloud infrastructure in code, version it, and provision it repeatably across AWS, GCP, Azure, and hundreds of other providers. Learn how it works and why it has become the standard IaC tool.