Concepts
Glossary of 13 concepts for cloud and automation, with definitions and links to the tutorials that use them.
- Concepts and Practices
Regular Expressions (Regex)
A regular expression is a pattern that matches text. It is used to search, validate and replace text in code, command line tools and infrastructure files.
Infrastructure as Code
Configuration Drift
Configuration drift is the difference between the real infrastructure and its Terraform code or state, caused by manual changes. Learn how to detect and fix it.
- Infrastructure as Code
Terraform Backend
A Terraform backend defines where the state is stored and how operations run. Learn the S3 backend, locking and how to migrate between backends.
- Infrastructure as Code
Terraform Workspace
A Terraform workspace is a named state inside the same backend and configuration, used to create several copies of an infrastructure.
- Infrastructure as Code
Terraform State
The Terraform state is the file where Terraform and OpenTofu record which real resources they manage, so they can plan and apply changes.
- Infrastructure as Code
Terraform Module
A Terraform module is a reusable set of resources in a directory, with input variables and outputs. Learn how modules work in Terraform and OpenTofu.
- Infrastructure as Code
Terraform Provider
A Terraform provider is a plugin that lets Terraform and OpenTofu manage resources of a platform such as AWS, Azure or Kubernetes through its API.
Security
Public Key Authentication
A public key is a cryptographic key that is part of a key pair used for public key cryptography.
- Infrastructure as Code
Terraform Built-in Functions
Terraform functions perform specific tasks on configuration data: numeric, string, collection, date and time, file system and more.
Configuration and Automation
Ansible Dynamic Inventory
Generate inventory (host and group information) dynamically rather than statically defining it in a static inventory file
- Infrastructure as Code
HCL
HCL is a domain-specific language developed by HashiCorp, a company known for its infrastructure automation tools such as Terraform, Vault, Consul, and Nomad.
- Concepts and Practices
IaC
IaC is an approach to managing and provisioning computing infrastructure through machine-readable code and automation, rather than manual processes.
- Networking and Delivery
OSI model
The OSI model is a conceptual framework that describes how a network functions, split into seven layers.