--- abstract: >- This page contains the glossary for this blog. authors: - name: Xander Harris email: xandertheharris@gmail.com date: 2025-09-30 title: Kubernetes the Hard Way Glossary --- ## Glossary ```{glossary} :sorted: Ansible [Ansible](https://docs.ansible.com/) offers open-source automation that is simple, flexible, and powerful. ArchLinux [ArchLinux](https://archlinux.org) is lightweight and flexible Linux® distribution that tries to Keep It Simple. ArgoCD [Argo CD](https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/en/stable/) is a declarative, GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes. AWS [AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/) is a formerly innovative and useful collection of services that provides most of the revenue from which the Bezos' fortune is created. Like all monopolies or near monopolies it has become far too expensive for far little value. Don't use this. Azure [Azure](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us) seems to have become the latest method for MS to demand (DEMAND!) that you use Copilot. You shouldn't use Copilot, it will make you dumb and decrease your capacity for genuine understanding of even basic ideas like object permanence. Calico Project [Calico](https://www.tigera.io/project-calico/) is an open-source project with an active development and user community. Calico Open Source was born out of this project and has grown to become the most widely adopted solution for container networking and security, powering 8M+ nodes daily across 166 countries. Cillium [Cilium](https://github.com/cilium/cilium) is a networking, observability, and security solution with an eBPF-based dataplane. It provides a simple flat Layer 3 network with the ability to span multiple clusters in either a native routing or overlay mode. It is L7-protocol aware and can enforce network policies on L3-L7 using an identity based security model that is decoupled from network addressing. CNI [CNI](https://github.com/containernetworking/cni) (Container Network Interface), a Cloud Native Computing Foundation project, consists of a specification and libraries for writing plugins to configure network interfaces in Linux containers, along with a number of supported plugins. CNI concerns itself only with network connectivity of containers and removing allocated resources when the container is deleted. Because of this focus, CNI has a wide range of support and the specification is simple to implement. CSI The Container Storage Interface ([CSI](https://kubernetes.io/blog/2019/01/15/container-storage-interface-ga/)) is a standardized method for providing storage drivers to Kubernetes. EasyRSA [EasyRSA](https://github.com/OpenVPN/easy-rsa) easy-rsa is a CLI utility to build and manage a PKI CA. In layman's terms, this means to create a root certificate authority, and request and sign certificates, including intermediate CAs and certificate revocation lists (CRL). Documentation is available [in the EasyRSA docs](https://easy-rsa.readthedocs.io/en/latest/). ECS [ECS](https://aws.amazon.com/ecs/?nc2=type_a) is kind of a first-draft version of Kubernetes, which is to say (even ten years on): half baked, feature-incomplete, too expensive, and for all but the simplest use cases almost entirely devoid of utility. EKS [EKS](https://aws.amazon.com/eks/?nc2=type_a) is the admission by {term}`AWS` that {term}`ECS` was a total failure and they lost the betamax/vhs style brand war to Google's Kubernetes team. It's implementation is poor, Amazon seems to be insisting that you run the important parts of it on your own infrastructure, and has so little understanding of Kubernetes as a managed service that they can't even provide a believable estimate for the monthly cost of a cluster. Also don't use this. etcd [etcd](https://etcd.io) is a strongly consistent, distributed key-value store that provides a reliable way to store data that needs to be accessed by a distributed system or cluster of machines. It gracefully handles leader elections during network partitions and can tolerate machine failure, even in the leader node. F5 [F5](https://www.f5.com/) is industry’s premier platform. The industry is presumably "tech" and the platform is presumably "networks?" on the Internet. Flannel [Flannel](https://github.com/flannel-io/flannel) is a simple and easy way to configure a layer 3 network fabric designed for Kubernetes. git-cliff [git-cliff](https://git-cliff.org/) is a highly customizable changelog generator. Helm [Helm](https://helm.sh) is the package manager for Kubernetes. Ingress NGINX [Ingress NGINX](https://github.com/kubernetes/ingress-nginx?tab=readme-ov-file) is an Ingress controller for Kubernetes using NGINX as a reverse proxy and load balancer. kubeadm [kubeadm](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/) is a tool built to provide kubeadm init and kubeadm join as best-practice "fast paths" for creating Kubernetes clusters. kubelet [kubelet](https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/command-line-tools-reference/kubelet/) is the primary "node agent" that runs on each node. It can register the node with the apiserver using one of: the hostname; a flag to override the hostname; or specific logic for a cloud provider. Kubernetes Kubernetes, also known as K8s, is an open source system for automating deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. Extensive use of the [related documentation](https://kubernetes.io/docs/home/) was made in the creation of this guide. LVM Logical Volume Manager ([LVM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_Volume_Manager_(Linux))) is a device‑mapper framework for the Linux (and NetBSD) kernel that provides flexible logical volume management by creating an abstraction layer over physical storage. NGINX [nginx](https://nginx.org/en/) ("engine x") is an HTTP web server, reverse proxy, content cache, load balancer, TCP/UDP proxy server, and mail proxy server. NGINX Ingress [NGINX Ingress Controller](https://docs.nginx.com/nginx-ingress-controller/) is an Ingress Controller implementation for NGINX that can load balance Websocket, gRPC, TCP and UDP applications. PostgreSQL [PostgreSQL](https://www.postgresql.org/) is a powerful, open source object-relational database system that uses and extends the SQL language combined with many features that safely store and scale the most complicated data workloads. RDBMS A [relational database management system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_database) is a type of database management system that stores data in a structured format using rows and columns. ssh [ssh](https://www.openssh.com/manual.html) is a basic rlogin/rsh-like client program sudo [sudo](https://www.sudo.ws/) allows a system administrator to delegate authority to give certain users (or groups of users) the ability to run some (or all) commands as root or another user while providing an audit trail of the commands and their arguments. ... [okay, sudo make me a sandwich](https://xkcd.com/149/). makepkg [makepkg](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Makepkg) is a script to automate the building of packages. The requirements for using the script are a build-capable Unix platform and a PKGBUILD. yay Yet another Yogurt - An AUR Helper written in Go. See the related [GitHub Repository](https://github.com/Jguer/yay) ```