Term 1
Cloud Native Concepts
Cloud native concepts are a set of practices and technologies that allow applications to be built, deployed, and scaled dynamically in modern cloud environments like public, private, and hybrid clouds.
Acronym study
Terms 1–14 of 14 KCNA acronyms and key terms. Each entry includes a plain-English definition and a link to the full 800-word glossary page with exam context and practice questions.
Term 1
Cloud native concepts are a set of practices and technologies that allow applications to be built, deployed, and scaled dynamically in modern cloud environments like public, private, and hybrid clouds.
Term 2
Container orchestration is the automated process of managing, deploying, scaling, and networking containers across multiple servers.
Term 3
The Container Runtime Interface (CRI) is a standardized plugin protocol that allows Kubernetes to work with different container runtimes without needing to change its core code.
Term 4
GitOps is a way to manage and automate cloud infrastructure and applications by using a Git repository as the single source of truth, where all changes are made through pull requests and automatically applied by a software agent.
Term 5
Helm Charts are packages of pre-configured Kubernetes resources that let you install, upgrade, and manage complex applications on a Kubernetes cluster with a single command.
Term 6
Horizontal Pod Autoscaling automatically adjusts the number of pod replicas in a Kubernetes cluster based on observed CPU, memory, or custom metrics.
Term 7
Kubernetes API Primitives are the basic building blocks that the Kubernetes API uses to represent and manage the state of a cluster, such as Pods, Services, Deployments, and Namespaces.
Term 8
Microservices architecture is a way of building software as a collection of small, independent services that each handle one specific business function and communicate over a network.
Term 9
A Namespace in Kubernetes is a virtual cluster within a physical cluster that allows you to organize and isolate resources, like an apartment building with separate units for different tenants.
Term 10
The Pod Lifecycle describes the sequence of states a Kubernetes pod passes through from creation to termination, including pending, running, succeeded, failed, and unknown conditions.
Term 11
Pods are the smallest deployable units in Kubernetes that wrap one or more containers, sharing network and storage resources.
Term 12
A ReplicaSet ensures a specified number of identical pod instances are running at all times in Kubernetes, using replication to maintain availability and stability.
Term 13
Serverless computing is a cloud execution model where the cloud provider dynamically manages the allocation and provisioning of servers, allowing developers to write and deploy code without thinking about the underlying infrastructure.
Term 14
A service mesh is a dedicated infrastructure layer that manages communication between microservices, handling tasks like service discovery, load balancing, encryption, and observability without requiring changes to application code.