Glossary
- AMI
- Acronym for Amazon Machine Image.
- AMQP
- Acronym for Advanced Message Queuing Protocol.
- Apache ANT
- A software tool for automating software build processes. See Ant for more info.
- Apache Maven
- A build automation tool typically used for Java projects. See Maven for more info.
- app
- Any application software intended for instantiation in Helion Stackato.
At minimum it consists of the application, expressed in a dynamic language,
plus a configuration file named
manifest.yml.
- Avahi
- An implementation of multicast DNS and related protocols.
- cluster
- A set of interconnected physical processors or virtual
machines, managed at least conceptually as a single entity but
otherwise operating autonomously. Historically the term carried
a variety of proprietary meanings, but came into general use
with the rapid development of supercomputing based upon
Beowulf Clusters.
A Helion Stackato cluster is one in which roles are assigned or
replicated to multiple cluster nodes.
- component
- Within Helion Stackato, the term component is used when naming a discrete part of the Helion Stackato server. For example,
a role is made up of one or more components.
- container
- A lightweight form of virtualization which provides resource isolation and secure separation for multiple
instances of the same base system. According to circumstances it may be used in addition to or instead of
hypervisor virtualization.
- CPAN
- Acronym for Comprehensive Perl Archive Network.
- DHCP
- Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol.
The DHCP service is used to allocate IP addresses to clients on demand and to supply other basic
network information they need, such as the addresses of a default router and DNS server.
- DNS
- Domain Name System.
Resolves domain names to IP addresses. See Server Config - DNS.
- dnsmasq
- A lightweight server for locally integrating DNS with DHCP/BOOTP.
- dynamic DNS
- A means of rapidly updating the Domain Name System, possibly making use of RFC 2136 Dynamic Updates.
- EC2
- Acronym for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud.
- filesystem
- In Helion Stackato, filesystem refers to persistent storage accessed by an application :term`service`
specified in
manifest.yml through a server which has been assigned the filesystem role.
- JSON
- A notation for structured text data,
acronym for JavaScript Object Notation.
- MBUS
- The implementation of the RFC 3259 message queue used for interprocess communication in Helion Stackato.
See also: NATS.
- memcached
- A free and open-source, high-performance, distributed memory object caching system,
generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications
by alleviating database load. (see Memcached project page)
- micro cloud
- A preconfigured Helion Stackato virtual machine image consisting of a single generic node enabled for
all the roles necessary for basic operation, but with no preinstalled apps
or services.
- mongodb
- A popular noSQL database management system.
- multicast DNS
- A distributed means of configuring DNS by multicast discovery.
It is supported on Helion Stackato :term`micro cloud` servers using Avahi.
- mysql
- A relational database management system.
- NAT
- Acronym for Network Address Translation.
- NATS
- In Helion Stackato, a publish-subscribe message system implemented as a process called
nats-server
which listens on a network interface, normally on port 4222/tcp.
Messages published across the network to a particular MBUS queue
managed by the nats-server are communicated to clients which are subscribed to that queue.
- Nginx
- Nginx is a high-performance, event-driven web server.
- node
- A Helion Stackato node is a single processing host in a cluster, typically a virtual machine
running under a hypervisor.
- OVA
- Acronym for Open Virtualization Archive, a tar package that contains an OVF
virtual machine image, a format developed by the DMTF industry consortium.
- PaaS
- Acronym for Platform as a Service.
- pip
- A tool for installing and managing Python packages, such as those found in the Python Package Index.
It is a replacement for
easy_install. See pip-installer
for more information.
- PyPM
- PyPM is the binary package manager for ActivePython. It is usually the fastest and most reliable
way of installing PyPI packages for your Helion Stackato applications. The PyPM repository hosts almost all
of the Python packages registered in PyPI and includes their latest versions.
See PyPM for more information.
- Polipo
- A lightweight caching web proxy intended for small applications.
- postgresql
- A relational database management system.
- private PaaS
- A private PaaS is one which is hosted on your private cloud, behind your firewall.
- RabbitMQ
- A message broker subsystem which
implements AMQP.
- Redis
- An implementation of memory resident key-value store.
- resolvconf
- A system configuration tool typically used by hook scripts at boot time.
See the resolvconf man page
for details.
- role
- Each node in a Helion Stackato cluster may be assigned certain selectable
capabilities
within the Helion Stackato architecture.
These capabilities are called roles, and are usually denoted in lowercase.
Examples of essential roles are
router, primary, controller, and dea.
In addition, there are role groups (for convenience) such as data-services that
represent all data-services. (postgresql mysql rabbit mongodb redis filesystem memcached)
- service
- In Helion Stackato, a service is a type of role that may be provisioned on a server and accessed by
an application as specified in
manifest.yml.
- supervisord
- A process control system used by Helion Stackato internally. (see Supervisor
project page)
- tty console
- The hypervisor window which provides serial console access to one of its virtual machines.
- VMDK
- Acronym for Virtual Machine Disk Format,
a proprietary specification for virtual machine images developed by VMware.
- YAML
- A notation for structured text data,
acronym for YAML Ain't Markup Language,
used in the
manifest.yml configuration file.
