Abbreviations and vocabulary

Introduction

In this documentation, we want to take a look at the various abbreviations and terms used in the context of STACKIT Cloud Foundry. If you are unfamiliar with the meaning of a specific technical term or abbreviation within the STACKIT Cloud Foundry concept, you can find its explanation here.

A

App Security Group (ASG)

• A collection of egress-allow rules to manage where applications are allowed to send traffic. Learn more about ASGs in the official Cloud Foundry documentation.

App AutoScaler

• The Cloud Foundry component that allows you to define rules for automatically scaling your application instances. Learn more in the user guide for App AutoScaler.

B

Buildpack

• A collection of scripts that enables Cloud Foundry to automatically containerize your source code or build artifacts. Learn more about the topic in “Containers and buildpacks”.

Binding

• The process of automatically injecting a service’s credentials into an application’s environment variables. Learn more about binding in “Create a service instance”.

C

Cloud Foundry (CF)

• The open source cloud native platform that is the technical “core component” of the entire Cloud Foundry ecosystem. Learn more about Cloud Foundry in the official Cloud Foundry documentation.

Cloud Foundry CLI (cf-cli)

• A tool that helps you interact with the Cloud Foundry API from your local console. Learn more about the cf-cli in the official Cloud Foundry documentation.

Cloud Native / Cloud Ready

• The design patterns your application architecture must follow to be deployable on Cloud Foundry. Learn more in “Requirements for applications”.

Container (Image)

• An executable instance of your application, packaged with all dependencies required to run. Learn more about containers in “Containers and buildpacks”.

D

Droplets

• The result of a buildpack staging process—essentially, the container image of an application containerized with buildpacks. Learn more about droplets in “Containers and buildpacks”.

Diego (Cells)

• The orchestration tool (and the cells: the virtual machines managed by Diego) integrated into Cloud Foundry to manage app containers. Learn more about Diego in the official Cloud Foundry documentation.

M

Manifest File

• A file in the project directory that defines the parameters for configuring the application for a push command. Learn more about manifests in “How to use manifest files”.

O

Organization (Org)

• A virtual entity in the Cloud Foundry context that helps you map your organizational structure to your shared Cloud Foundry resources. Learn more about orgs in “Organizations, spaces and user-roles”.

P

Push

• The command for uploading, deploying, and distributing an application (source code, build artifact, or container image) to Cloud Foundry. Learn more about push in “Push your app to Cloud Foundry”.

Q

Quota

• Resource limits (memory, routes, service instances, etc.) applied to orgs and spaces. Learn more in the official Cloud Foundry documentation.

R

Route

• The address automatically assigned to an app to access it under a specific wildcard domain. Learn more about routes in the official Cloud Foundry documentation.

S

Service Instance

• A provisioned instance of a managed service (database, messaging, etc.) available to applications. Learn more in the official Cloud Foundry documentation.

Space

• A virtual entity in the Cloud Foundry context that helps you map your organizational structure to your Cloud Foundry resources. Learn more about spaces in “Organizations, spaces and user-roles”.

Staging (to stage)

• The process of containerizing your application’s source code or build artifact using buildpacks. Learn more about buildpacks in “Containers and buildpacks”.

Stratos

• The open source tool we use as a console UI—a user interface that lets you interact with the CF API. Learn more in the official Stratos documentation.

U

UAA (User Account and Authentication)

• The component used by Cloud Foundry for managing user identities and user roles. Learn more about UAA in the official Cloud Foundry documentation.

V

VCAP

• Prefix for Cloud Foundry-specific environment variables (such as VCAP_SERVICES for injected service credentials). Learn more about these in the official Cloud Foundry documentation.