Cloud Platform
Cloud Platform glossary
This page defines some of the important terms used in the Cloud Platform interface. We’ve made some changes in terminology from the previous version of the Cloud Platform interface, and this page also points out those changes.
A broader Term index is also available.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Administrator | Cloud Platform special role containing all possible permissions for all of the applications in an organization. You cannot remove permissions from the Administrator role, and the Administrator can act on an application even if not assigned to a team. Multiple people can be assigned to the Administrator role in an organization. |
| Application | A software product that implements a web service, such as a Drupal-based website or a web-accessible API. In a modern digital portfolio, applications can include mobile or wearable apps, IoT (Internet of Things), and future interface devices. In Cloud Platform, an application refers to the software product as an entity in itself, separate from the potentially many installations of the application in different environments, such as Production, or Development, that may use specific domain names, with specific content. Applications have a lifecycle and typically have multiple versions. An application is primarily made up of its program code, such as Drupal core plus contributed and custom modules, along with static assets such as images and stylesheets for its visual theme. |
| Container | Containers are ready-to-run software packages that contain everything needed to run an application. Containers decouple applications from the underlying host infrastructure. This makes deployment easier in different cloud or OS environments. Each node in a Kubernetes cluster runs the containers that form the Pods assigned to that node. |
| Database role | A website-specific identifier, based on the database. |
| Elastic Load Balancer (ELB) | Distributes incoming application traffic across multiple infrastructure, improving the responsiveness and increasing the availability of applications. ELBs are required when using the legacy (ELB-based) SSL model on Cloud Platform. |
| Elastic IP Address (EIP) | A static IPv4 address assigned to your application either for DNS and inbound traffic routing purposes or for ensuring you can secure outbound connections from your application to remote services (with an IP allowlist). Cloud Platform doesn’t support Elastic IP addresses for IPv6. |
| Environment | Separate areas in your application you can use to maintain a clear and orderly workflow as you develop, test, and publish your applications. Cloud Platform deploys your application on each of its environments, but each environment may be in a different state with its own database, and possibly a different code branch or tag, deployed. Each environment has a unique URL, but only the Production environment’s URL is designed to be visible to the application’s users (website visitors). The number of environments available to you depends on your Acquia subscription. |
| Node | Nodes are physical or virtual machines that run a group of containers in pods. Nodes have ephemeral storage that pods can use for temporary files and may mount external storage volumes such as AWS EFS. Nodes can have different amounts of CPU, memory, and ephemeral storage. Based on the resource request from pods, Kubernetes scheduler can select a node that has space. |
| Organization | A group of subscriptions, applications, and teams in Cloud Platform. An organization can represent different business objects for different entities. You can group all your company’s applications under a single organization, or under independent organizations for separate business units. Acquia sets up your organizations after you create an Acquia subscription. Each subscription, including its applications and team, belongs to one and only one organization. A user can be on teams that are assigned to any number of organizations. |
| Owner | Cloud Platform special role containing all possible permissions for all applications in an organization. You cannot remove permissions from the Owner role, and the Owner can act on an application even if you don’t assign the Owner to a team. An organization must always have exactly one Owner. The Owner of an organization also acts in all respects as an Administrator. |
| Pod | Pods are the smallest deployable units of computing that you can create and manage in Kubernetes. Pods are groups of one or more containers with shared storage and network resources and a specification for how to run the containers. |
| Scheduled job | Automated maintenance task performed at scheduled intervals using the Scheduled Jobs page in the Cloud Platform interface. For the Site Factory feature, see Scheduled jobs in Site Factory. |
| Sitename (or application name) | The permanent name used for your application’s default URL and code repository. The sitename naming convention consists of the name of your application on Cloud Platform and the abbreviated environment name of the environment you want to connect to. For more information about the sitename naming convention or requirements, see the Sitename definition page. |
| Subscription | A set of entitlements you have purchased from Acquia, including how many applications you can host on Cloud Platform, what infrastructure they run on, and what level of support you are entitled to. Each organization can have one or more subscriptions. |
| Team | Organizational unit of users who work on developing and managing Cloud Platform applications, and are assigned to applications. The role you assign to a user as a member of a team defines that user’s permissions for an application. For example, some roles allow a user to act only on non-Production environments for the team’s applications. For more information, see Managing users, teams, roles, and permissions. |
If this content did not answer your questions, try searching or contacting our support team for further assistance.
If this content did not answer your questions, try searching or contacting our support team for further assistance.
Cloud Platform