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Cloud cost glossary

Plain answers to the Kubernetes, block storage and pricing terms on your cloud bill.

Kubernetes

10 terms

What is CPU throttling in Kubernetes?CPU throttling in Kubernetes is when the Linux kernel holds back a container that hits its CPU limit.

What is a DaemonSet in Kubernetes?A DaemonSet in Kubernetes runs one copy of a pod on each node.

What is EKS Auto Mode?EKS Auto Mode is a mode of Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), where AWS runs your nodes, not just the control plane.

What is headroom in Kubernetes?Kubernetes headroom is spare node capacity you keep free on purpose.

What is Kubernetes cluster utilization?Kubernetes cluster utilization is the share of your nodes’ CPU and memory that pods request or use.

Max pods per node: meaning and cost impactMax pods per node is the most pods one Kubernetes node can run.

What is a node pool in Kubernetes?A node pool in Kubernetes is a group of nodes that share one configuration.

What are resource limits in Kubernetes?A CPU limit in Kubernetes is the most CPU time a container may use.

What are resource requests in Kubernetes?A resource request in Kubernetes is how much CPU, memory or another resource a container asks for.

What is VPA (Vertical Pod Autoscaler)?VPA in Kubernetes is the Vertical Pod Autoscaler, which sets the CPU and memory requests of a workload’s pods to match real use.

Block storage

10 terms

What is an Azure managed disk?An Azure managed disk is a block storage volume that Azure manages for your virtual machine (VM).

What is the Azure temporary disk?The Azure temporary disk, or Azure temp disk, is short-term storage that comes with most Azure virtual machines (VMs).

What is block storage?Block storage is storage that a server uses as a disk.

df vs du: meaning and cost impactdf vs du is the comparison of two Linux commands that report disk space.

What is disk throughput?Disk throughput is the amount of data a disk reads and writes each second.

What is an EBS volume?An EBS volume is a block-level storage device you attach to an EC2 instance, a virtual machine (VM) in AWS.

What is an ephemeral OS disk?An Azure ephemeral OS disk is an operating system disk on the local storage of its virtual machine (VM).

What is IOPS?IOPS, short for input/output operations per second, is how many reads and writes a disk handles each second.

What is provisioned IOPS?Provisioned IOPS is the disk performance you set and pay for, counted in input/output operations per second (IOPS).

What is thin provisioning?Thin provisioning in storage creates a volume that takes up space only as you write data.

FinOps and pricing

10 terms

What is chargeback in cloud computing?Chargeback in cloud computing means billing each internal team for its share of the cloud bill.

What is cloud unit economics?Cloud unit economics means working out the cloud cost of one business unit, such as one sale or one user.

What is FinOps?FinOps is a practice where finance, engineering and business teams share ownership of cloud spend.

What is Kubernetes cost allocation?Kubernetes cost allocation splits a shared cluster’s cost across its pods.

What is an on-demand instance?An on-demand instance is a cloud virtual machine (VM) you pay for by how long it runs, with no commitment.

What is a reserved instance?A reserved instance is a one-year or three-year commitment to a virtual machine (VM) setup, in return for a discount.

What is rightsizing in cloud?Rightsizing in cloud cost optimization means matching a resource’s size to what it needs, based on measured use.

What is a savings plan (AWS and Azure)?An AWS Savings Plan is a commitment to spend a set dollar amount per hour on compute, for one or three years.

What is showback in FinOps?Showback is a report that splits your cloud bill by team, application or cost center.

What is a spot instance?A spot instance is a cloud virtual machine (VM) that runs on spare capacity, for less than the on-demand price.

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