IBM Cloud Technical Advocate key terms

A cloud delivery model where the provider supplies virtualized compute, storage and networking over the internet, while the customer manages the operating system, middleware and applications running on top of that infrastructure.

A cloud model in which the provider runs the servers, operating system and runtime, so developers push application code and let the platform handle patching, scaling and availability.

A fully managed application accessed over the internet, usually by subscription or usage metering; the provider operates infrastructure, platform and software, while the customer manages only its own data and users.

The ability to add or release compute, storage and network capacity automatically as workload demand rises or falls, so performance is maintained without paying for idle resources.

An architecture where one pool of provider infrastructure and software serves many customers, with logical isolation of data and configuration so each tenant appears to have its own environment.

The full cost of owning and running a workload over time, including hardware, facilities, licensing, staffing, downtime and refresh cycles, used to compare on-premises and cloud options.

An IBM Cloud region is a geographic area containing three or more availability zones; a zone is an isolated data center group with independent power and cooling, so workloads can survive a single-site failure.

A logically isolated network on IBM Cloud where you define subnets, IP ranges, routing and security groups, and launch virtual server instances and other resources with controlled inbound and outbound traffic.

A virtual machine on IBM Cloud VPC with selectable profiles for vCPU and memory, running a stock or custom image and billed by the hour or month against attached storage and networking.

A dedicated physical server in an IBM Cloud data center, rented by the month with no hypervisor layer, chosen for high I/O, licensing or performance workloads that need single-tenant hardware.

A managed Kubernetes offering where IBM operates the control plane across zones while you deploy worker nodes and containers, with integrated load balancing, logging and security controls.

A managed OpenShift service that adds enterprise Kubernetes tooling, stricter security defaults and developer workflows on top of IBM-managed control planes and worker nodes.

A serverless platform that runs container images, batch jobs and source code without managing clusters or servers; it scales to zero and bills for resources consumed while code executes.

A scalable, HTTP-accessible service for unstructured data such as backups, media and analytics lakes, offering multiple storage classes and immutability options that support compliance requirements.

Network-attached volumes presented to a virtual server as raw disks and formatted with a file system by the customer, used for boot volumes and databases with performance tiers defined by IOPS.

A managed NFS-based shared file system that many virtual servers can mount at once, useful for content repositories and applications that need a common directory across nodes.

Fully managed, provisioned database services such as PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis and Elasticsearch, where IBM handles backups, patching, high availability and scaling so teams focus on schema and queries.

A private, dedicated network connection between an on-premises data center and IBM Cloud that bypasses the public internet, giving predictable latency, higher bandwidth and stronger security.

A network service that connects multiple VPCs, classic infrastructure and Direct Link or VPN attachments through a single hub, so traffic can be routed without building full mesh links.

A service that distributes incoming traffic across multiple server instances using health checks and scheduling algorithms, improving availability and letting applications scale horizontally behind one address.

IBM Cloud's system for authenticating users and service IDs and authorizing actions through policies that combine a subject, a target resource and a platform or service role.

A named collection of users and service IDs to which IAM policies are attached once, so every member inherits the same permissions and onboarding or removal stays simple.

A non-human identity used by applications and automation to authenticate to IBM Cloud APIs; it holds its own API keys and receives access through IAM policies like a user.

A managed key management service that creates, rotates and deletes encryption keys protecting data at rest in IBM Cloud services, with a root of trust anchored in hardware security modules.

An IBM Cloud service providing a dedicated, FIPS 140-2 Level 4 validated hardware security module that you control, used for master keys and cryptographic operations that must remain single-tenant.

A model where the customer generates or imports encryption keys into a cloud key management service, retaining control over rotation and revocation while the provider stores and uses wrapped keys.

The division of security duties between cloud provider and customer: the provider secures facilities, hypervisor and managed services, while the customer secures configurations, identities, data and applications.

A packaged application with its dependencies that shares the host operating system kernel, so it starts fast, runs identically across environments and uses fewer resources than a full virtual machine.

An architectural style that splits an application into small, independently deployable services with their own data and APIs, so teams can release, scale and fail in isolation.

A modernization approach that incrementally replaces parts of a legacy system with new services routed in front of it, until the old system can be retired without a big-bang rewrite.

IBM's studio for building generative AI and machine learning applications, giving teams access to foundation models, prompt tooling, tuning and deployment inside a governed environment.

A large model pretrained on broad data that can be adapted to many downstream tasks through prompting or fine-tuning, rather than being trained for one narrow purpose.

A technique where an application retrieves relevant documents from a knowledge base and supplies them to a language model, grounding answers in current private content and reducing invented responses.

An IBM Cloud account construct that organizes related services and resources for access control and billing visibility; every resource belongs to exactly one resource group.

A key-value label attached to IBM Cloud resources so you can filter inventories, report costs by project or owner, and drive automation across services.

A public tool for pricing a proposed architecture before purchase; you select services, regions and configurations and receive an estimated monthly cost breakdown.

A pricing model where IBM Cloud charges for resources actually consumed in a period with no upfront commitment, allowing spend to follow usage but requiring active monitoring.

A subscription that defines response-time targets and channels for IBM Cloud cases, ranging from Basic self-service through Advanced and Premium tiers with faster response and named contacts.

A parent account containing multiple child accounts that centralizes billing and user management, letting an organization separate environments or business units while keeping governance in one place.