DevOps Terminology
A short guide to DevOps terminology for non-technical people
Last updated on January 3rd, 2024
When you are working in the digital industry it’s easy to get blindsided by tech terms, programs and processes you may not be familiar with. This is especially true if your role is not primarily a technical one.
This is a guide to some of the latest DevOps terminology, that should give you a high-level overview of what they actually mean.
GitHub
Is a user interface for project repositories (i.e. ‘Code’) that allows usage of the GIT version control system. Using GitHub allows users to fork repositories which allows multiple developers to work on a singular code base and create pull requests for other team members to review code submissions before their ‘fork’ gets merged with the main code branch.
Node
Node (node.js) is an open source server environment program that allows JavaScript code to be run directly on a server. Node is updated fairly frequently and the current version is 21. A Node Version Manager (NVM) is required to update Node and also switch between different versions of node on a single computer.
Development Pipelines
A pipeline is a set of automated processes that allow developers to compile, build and deploy their code to production websites reliably and efficiently.
Terraform
Terraform is an Infrastructure as Code tool for building, changing, and versioning infrastructure safely and efficiently. In short it is used for deploying, managing, and orchestrating multi-cloud environments (such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure Cloud Services).
Azure Portal
Is a portal that allows a user to manage all their applications within their Azure Subscription in one place. It is a graphical user interface, and can be used as an alternative to command lines.
Azure Key Vault
This is a Microsoft cloud service for securely storing SSL Certificates, API Keys & Passwords – which are collectively known as ‘secrets’.
YAML
It is commonly used for configuration files and in applications where data is being stored or transmitted.
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
A container orchestration service.
Bridge to Kubernetes
Is a service that allows debugging on your local computer.
Azure Service Bus
Provides a mechanism for transfer of date and state.
Dynatrace
Monitors drops in traffic.
Powershell
PowerShell is a cross-platform task automation and configuration management framework.
TeamCity
Teamcity is Continuous Integration tool written in Java language which supports building and deploying different types of projects.
Octopus Deploy
Octopus Deploy is a deployment tool. It takes the packages and artifacts generated by your build server and deploys them to various targets, be it Windows, Linux, Azure, AWS, or Kubernetes, in a safe and consistent process.
For an overview of Loan, Pen, Regression & Unit testing please visit the Quality Assurance section.
Useful Resources
- What is node – Code Academy
- Node.js
- Continuous Integration vs. Continuous Delivery – By Atlassian