Glossary of Terms
From GoGrid
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A
Apache – Apache is the most popular HTTP web server used to serve both static and dynamic web pages on the internet. This application is available for all RHEL and CentOS operating systems for the GoGrid platform. Apache has a number of great features, ranging from server-side programming language support to authentication schemes. Apache is the web server component of the popular LAMP (Linux , Apache, MySQL, PHP) web server application stack.
API - An application programming interface (API) is a set of declarations of the functions (or procedures) that an operating system, library or service provides to support requests made by computer programs. GoGrid's API is language independent, allowing users to programatically access all of the available functions in the GoGrid UI.
ASP.NET - ASP.NET is a web application framework, developed by Microsoft, that programmers can use to build dynamic web sites, web applications and web services. It was first released in January 2002 with version 1.0 of the .NET Framework, and is the successor to Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASP) technology. ASP.NET is built on the Common Language Runtime, allowing programmers to write ASP.NET code using any supported .NET language. GoGrid provides ASP.NET Windows 2003 Server Images that can easily be deployed to develop web applications.
B
Backend Network – A backend network provides the ability of servers to communicate privately with one another without transmitting data over a public channel or over the internet. This is particularly useful for connecting to databases and clustering, among many other uses.
C
Capistrano - Capistrano is open source tool for running scripts on multiple servers; its main use is deploying web applications. It automates the process of making a new version of an application available on one or more web servers, including supporting tasks such as changing databases.
CentOS – CentOS is a free and open source Linux distribution based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. CentOS, while based on RHEL, is not maintained or supported by Red Hat. CentOS is a free alternative to RHEL.
Cloning – Cloning is the ability to duplicate a server and all data on it. This is extremely helpful when scaling your network, especially in saving the time it takes to manually copy files.
Cloud Server - Cloud Server is virtual machine that is dynamically scalable by virtualization.
Cloud Storage - Cloud Storage is the persistent storage allotment shared on a GoGrid account's private network. Allotments are assigned in GB blocks and users are charged $0.15/GB storage over their free allotment.
Content Delivery Network (CDN) - a network of servers containing copies of data placed at various points in a network in order to maximize bandwidth for access to the data from users throughout the network. A user accesses a copy of the data nearest to the user, as opposed to all users accessing the same central server causing a bottleneck at that server. The GoGrid CDNprovides this service to GoGrid customers.
D
Database – A database is a structured collection of data, usually stored in rows and tables. Databases are used to store large amounts of information that can easily be queried and provide results at break-neck speeds. The information retrieved from the query is applied to make decisions, such as results for web applications or e-commerce systems.
Data center - A facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. It generally includes redundant or backup power supplies, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls (e.g., air conditioning, fire suppression) and security devices.
DDoS Protection – A DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack is when multiple compromised systems, or “bots”, attack a specified target, such a web server, to flood its bandwidth or resources. This will inevitably cause the targeted server to be flooded with false connections, thus making it unavailable until the lack of resources cause the server to fail or until the attack subsides and resources are freed. GoGrid has DDoS protection through our Riverhead system, ensuring that DDoS attacks are addressed without affecting the target’s resources by redirecting false traffic.
Dedicated Server - A Dedicated Server (or GoGrid Dedicated Server) is a physical server that is used exclusively by one customer. GoGrid Dedicated Servers reside on the same public and private VLANs as your Cloud Servers, allowing you to build a secure infrastructure that combines the flexibility of virtualization with the performance of dedicated hardware.
DNS – DNS, or Domain Name Server, hosts domain names, such as gogrid.com, and acts as the phone book for the Internet by translating domain names into IP addresses. DNS is responsible for routing all requests for your domain to your server when requested by a user on the internet.
E
F
FastCGI - FastCGI is a protocol for interfacing interactive programs with a web server. FastCGI is a variation on the earlier Common Gateway Interface (CGI); FastCGI's main aim is to reduce the overhead associated with interfacing the web server and CGI programs, allowing a server to handle more web page requests at once.
Firewall – A firewall is a software application or hardware component that inspects all traffic passing through a server and accepts or denies that traffic according to a set of policies as applied by the server administrator. GoGrid supports software firewalls only.
Facebook - Facebook is a social networking site that allows for developers to contribute applications that interact with Facebook features. GoGrid offers a Facebook Server Image that allows Facebook developers to contribute their applications through GoGrid servers directly to Facebook's development network.
G
Gateway – A Gateway is a computer or network device that allows or controls access to another computer or network. Your gateway IP in GoGrid is located on the left-hand side under the “Network” menu.
GoGrid – GoGrid is the first grid server hosting platform where servers, databases, and load balancing can easily be deployed, deleted and controlled via a web-based user interface.
GoGrid Data Center - The location where GoGrid infrastructure is hosted; including, virtual and physical servers, Cloud Storage, and load balancers. Each GoGrid data center is named based on its location.
Grid Server – Grid servers are deployed on the GoGrid Hosting Internet Platform which is comprised of a collection of Intel Quad Core servers that use virtualization technology and Gigabit switching to offer dynamic features that enable rapid scalability.
GSI – A GoGrid Server Image is a file that contains the state of a computer server's file system at a discrete point in time. GSIs can be launched into a running instance of a GoGrid Cloud Server. For a list of supported GSIs see here.
GUI – A GUI (Graphical User Interface) is an interface that allows humans to interact with computers via visual indicators in conjunction with text, a control selector (usually a mouse) and a screen. GoGrid’s GUI is our web-based control panel where servers can be deployed, deleted, etc.
H
Horizontal Scaling – Horizontal scaling is the act of increasing network resources by adding additional servers. Scaling horizontally in GoGrid is done through deploying additional servers via the web-based GUI.
Hybrid Architecture – A combination of virtual (cloud) and dedicated servers within a shared public and private network. GoGrid offers a unique proposition in enabling customers to create hybrid architectures resulting in highly performant and scalable systems.
I
IIS – IIS (Internet Information Systems) is a set of Microsoft Windows-based internet services for servers. The servers currently include FTP, SMTP, NNTP, and HTTP/HTTPS and are similar in fashion to Apache.
Image Sandbox – A specialized cloud server, VM, that has fixed disk and memory size. GSIs can be only saved from preped Image Sandboxes.
IP Address – An IP address is a unique address used for electronic devices to communicate with one another via a computer network that utilizes Internet Protocol. In GoGrid, IP addresses can be assigned to your servers so that they can be accessed from the internet. They can also be assigned to load balancers, database servers, or to create a backend connection.
J
Job History - GoGrid's Job History shows a log of every action users take in the GoGrid user interface or API. You can see results for add, delete, restart and save on any object including the user who executed the command.
K
L
LAMP - An acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. LAMP stacks are a group of software applications that run on the Linux platform which are used to deliver web applications, dynamic web content and Web 2.0 environments. Also see "Apache", "MySQL" and "PHP" on this page. GoGrid also offers a LAMP Server Image with a LAMP stack pre-installed.
Linux – Linux is a UNIX-like operating system option other than Windows. There are many Linux distributions, such as CentOS, Red Hat, Debian, Fedora, etc. Linux is mostly known for its use in servers.
Load Balancer – A Load Balancer is a hardware device or software application that balances traffic between several servers to ensure that connections to the servers are evenly distributed. Load balancers can also be software-based, but perform much slower than hardware load balancers. GoGrid uses a hardware load balancer. Load balancing can be provisioned through the GoGrid portal automatically, and can be configured for either static or round-robin balancing.
M
MySQL – MySQL is a multi-threaded, multi-user database management system. The basic program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. MySQL is also a relational database server, but is open-source and offered at no cost. MySQL is particularly useful for web applications and acts as the database in a LAMP (see above) stack.
Mongrel - Mongrel is an open-source HTTP library and web server for Ruby web applications. A distinguishing feature of Mongrel is that it uses plain HTTP, rather than FastCGI or SCGI, to communicate with other servers which may be layered in front of it.
MyGSI - The MyGSI feature allows you to create, save, and store a "Server Image" in which to instantiate Database and Web/App Servers from. You can instantiate an Image Sandbox Server, install your software, websites, applications and whatever else you see fit, save the Image Sandbox Server to GoGrid's Cloud Storage as a Server Image and instantiate new Web/App or Database instances from your "golden" Server Image.
N
O
Object - A GoGrid object is a feature that may be added via the GoGrid customer portal. For example Cloud (virtual) servers, f5 load balancers, Cloud Storage and Dedicated (physical) servers are objects that may be added via the customer portal.
P
PartnerGSI – A GSI that is created by a third party GoGrid partner. GoGrid does not own the applications on a PartnerGSI. For a list of supported PartnerGSIs see here.
PHP – PHP is a programming language used for populating dynamic web pages. It is mainly used in web development and can be embedded into HTML by using PHP code as its input and HTML as the output. PHP is also a part of the popular LAMP environment, but has many other useful applications as well.
PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL (also known as postgres) is an object-relational database management system (ORDBMS). It is released under a BSD-style license and is thus free software. As with many other open-source programs, PostgreSQL is not controlled by any single company, but relies on a global community of developers and companies to develop it.
Private Network - A private network is a local LAN whose private IPs are not accessible from the internet,
but are only accessible from IPs within it's local LAN. All GoGrid customers are assigned a private network.
Public Network - A public network is a public LAN whose public IPs are accessible from the internet, and from from private IPs within private network. All GoGrid customers are assigned a public network.
PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL (also known as postgres) is an object-relational database management system (ORDBMS). It is released under a BSD-style license and is thus free software. As with many other open-source programs, PostgreSQL is not controlled by any single company, but relies on a global community of developers and companies to develop it.
Q
R
RAM – Random Access Memory (RAM) is a type of computer data storage used for short-term memory intensive processing at random. This is different than hard disk memory, which requires the use of a mechanism of some sort. Servers on GoGrid are measure by the amount of RAM they have deployed on them.
RAM Thrashing – RAM thrashing refers to the degenerate situation that can occur when two or more processes are sharing and accessing the same RAM resources. Performance degradation can occur because the system is spending a disproportionate amount of time just accessing the shared RAM. This can easily be prevented by including more RAM resources or by reducing the number of running applications.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) – RHEL is a Linux distribution offered by Red Hat and targeted towards commercial applications.
Ruby on Rails - Ruby on Rails is a free web application framework designed to make web development faster, simpler and more efficient. Often shortened to Rails, or RoR, Ruby on Rails is written in the Ruby programming language. GoGrid provides Ruby on Rails Server Images for CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise operating systems.
S
Sandbox – See Image Sandbox
Server Image – See GSI.
Server RAM Hour – GoGrid’s rate plans are based on the Server RAM Hour, a way of measuring the usage of GoGrid accounts. Like cell phones have minutes, GoGrid has Server RAM Hours. Server RAM hours are measured in GB RAM used per hour. This means that every GB of RAM deployed for 1 hour equals a Server RAM hour. Servers can have 512 MB, 1 GB or 2 GB RAM.
Snapshot – A Snapshot is a copy of a set of particular directories and files as they were at a specific time in the past.
Static IP – A static IP address is one that is bound to a particular interface on a server and is persistent between reboots. This means that a server with a particular static IP address bound to it will always use that IP address for whatever services are being used on that interface.
SQL Server (or MSSQL Server) – MSSQL Server is a relational database server software produced by Microsoft.
T
Transfer – The amount of data sent to or from one server to another. In GoGrid, all inbound transfer (data incoming to the server) is free while outbound transfer (data outgoing from the server) is applied towards your transfer plan.
U
US-East-1 - GoGrid’s west coast data center located in San Francisco, CA.
US-West-1 - GoGrid east coast data center located in Ashburn, VA.
User Role – Administrators are given the ability to assign roles to users on their GoGrid. The roles include Read Only, Billing User, System User, and Super User.
V
Vertical Scaling – Vertical scaling is the act of increasing raw computational power such as RAM to an existing server, thus effectively making it more powerful. This can be done in GoGrid by increasing RAM allotments to your servers.
VIP – A VIP, or Virtual IP, is an IP address that is not connected to a specific computer or network interface card on a computer. Incoming packets are sent to the VIP address, but all packets travel through real network interfaces. VIPs are used in GoGrid to connect servers to the Load Balancer.
W
Web Control Panel – GoGrid’s web-based control panel is available at my.gogrid.com. From the control panel, users can start and restart servers or deploy and delete servers at will. Load balancing and databases can all be added and removed from your network with ease through the use of the web-based control panel. GoGrid’s web GUI is accessible from any internet browser, so servers can be added and deleted from a beach in Hawaii or from the desk at your office.
Windows – Microsoft Windows is a software operating system that provides a GUI (see above definition) for users to interact with their computer. GoGrid supports Windows 2003 on its servers.
X
Xen – Xen is a free software virtual machine application that runs on a hardware host operating system and allows several software level operating systems to run on the same hardware. GoGrid’s technology is Xen-based, allowing for greener computing and advanced deployment techniques.
