Glossary

A

ACI context A tenant network. Also called a private network in the APIC GUI.

ACI contract A set of rules between endpoint groups (EPGs) that defines communications.

ACI endpoint group (EPG) A managed object that is a named logical entity that contains a collection of endpoints in ACI.

ACI tenant In ACI, a logical container for application policies that enables an administrator to exercise domain-based access control.

Advanced Catalog An end-user orderable item within UCS Director that enables end users to execute workflows.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Amazon’s public cloud offering.

AMQP Advanced Message Queuing Protocol, a standards-based method for constructing, routing, queuing, and publishing communications between distributed software applications.

Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) The Cisco software-defined networking offering for data center and cloud networks.

application container An application group within UCS Director designed to enable end users to rapidly deploy and manage a group of virtual machines deployed into one or more network segments as a single entity.

Application Group The capability in UCS Performance Monitor to group multiple virtual machines (VMs) and/or physical hosts together to see all potential infrastructure faults in the path of that group of systems.

Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC) The unifying point of management and automation for Nexus 9000 switches using Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) mode in a Cisco fabric.

Application Virtual Switch (AVS) Programmed by the APIC, the virtual switching components in a Nexus 9000 SDN architecture.

automation task A task that completes in a predictable and repeatable fashion without user input.

B

Baremetal Appliance (BMA) A virtual appliance that ships as part of UCS Director that allows for PXE booting and installation of operating systems on both physical and virtual machines.

base DN Base distinguished name, the point from which a server will start its search for users.

bind DN Bind distinguished name, an object in LDAP that you bind to that gives you permission to perform a certain operation.

Budget Watch A feature of UCS Director used to enforce a per-group governance policy related to the amount of cloud consumption available tracked by Cost Models.

BYOD Bring your own device is an IT service many companies offer to allow their employees to use personally owned tablets and smartphones on the corporate network. This service can be provisioned through Prime Service Catalog.

C

Catalyst A popular Cisco Ethernet switch.

change management database (CMDB) A database used in organizations to track changes to infrastructure so that projects and changes can be referenced centrally over time in a single location.

chargeback The ability to set up parameters within UCS Director or Prime Service Catalog to allow departmental billing for infrastructure within your private cloud.

Cisco Adaptive Security Virtual Appliance (ASAv) A virtualized version of the popular Cisco ASA firewall product.

Cisco PowerShell Agent (PSA) A system that UCS Director can point to that will run PowerShell commands against remote systems.

CloudSense UCS Director reporting engine.

CloudSense Analytics A reporting module within UCS Director that uses out-of-the-box or custom templates to create reports based on data from multiple infrastructure reports and saves the data to be retrieved in the future.

Cloupia Script Based on JavaScript, the language used for creating custom tasks and scripts needed to extend functionality of UCS Director.

compound workflow A type of workflow that is designed to be used within other workflows.

Computing Policy Determine on which hypervisor host system to deploy the VM.

container gateway The boundary between the inside and outside of an application container that provides security and network controls for traffic traversing the boundary.

container template A grouping of policies and configurations from which individual application containers can be instantiated.

Cost Model A UCS Director policy used to create a monetary rate card for infrastructure consumption that is applied to virtual data centers.

cron A Linux utility used for scheduling automatic execution of some action over some time period.

D–E

dashboard A view that provides the user with immediate access to the most important pieces of information about the status of the underlying system.

End User Self-Service Policy Provide access to out-of-the-box VM lifecycle action tasks to end users.

event A record of a change in state of a system or component of a system. Does not necessarily indicate a problem.

F

Fabric Extender (FEX) Similar to a remote linecard, a fabric extender enables Ethernet ports to be decentralized from a central switch and located closer to hosts in the data center, usually at the top of rack.

Fabric Interconnects Within a UCS system, aggregate management and I/O for up to 20 chassis, 160 servers. They’re deployed in redundant pairs.

fault An occurrence of a condition that deviates from the normal and expected state of a system or component of a system.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) A technology that encapsulates Fibre Channel frames within Ethernet frames for delivery over a single Ethernet fabric. It enables Fibre Channel to use 10 Gigabit or faster Ethernet networks for the delivery of storage/Fibre Channel traffic.

flapping interval The short interval over which repeated changes in failure state of a component indicates a Flapping state.

fully qualified domain name (FQDN) The LDAP syntax to refer to an object. For example, if user1 is in the acme.com domain, the FQDN for this object would be user1.acme.com.

G–H–I

guest Another name for a virtual machine.

Heat Orchestration An orchestration engine that is part of OpenStack.

in-service software upgrade (ISSU) The ability to upgrade a product or component without interrupting data-plane traffic.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Delivering infrastructure resources such as storage, network, compute, and virtualization “as a service” by providing self-service capabilities, easy service catalog ordering, etc.

Intercloud Fabric A Cisco product that allows you to securely extend your on-premises Layer 2 networks out into public cloud providers such as AWS or Azure or Cisco Powered cloud providers.

IO Module (IOM) Exists in the back of a UCS Blade Series 5108 chassis and is responsible for delivering Ethernet, Fibre Channel (using FCoE), and management traffic to servers/blades in that chassis.

J-K-L

Juniper Virtual Gateway (vGW) A hypervisor-based firewall and intrusion detection system.

Keystone Identify management component of OpenStack.

LDAP search base A way to limit where in an LDAP tree a search should start.

lifecycle management The process for managing an IT service from inception to decommissioning.

Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) A client/server protocol used to access and manage directory information over TCP/IP networks.

M

Map Report A type of infrastructure report available for cloud accounts in UCS Director that displays a color-coded heatmap view indicating relative usage of infrastructure like CPU, memory, and storage.

Microsoft Azure Microsoft’s public cloud offering.

Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) A Microsoft product used to administer and manage Windows systems, Macs, and UNIX/Linux servers along with cloud-based mobile devices.

Multilayer Director Switch (MDS) A Cisco product used for Fibre Channel switching.

My Stuff An interactive list of provisioned resources (service items) where users can view and manage items such as virtual machines.

N

Network Policy Determine the number and type of network connectivity needed for the VM.

Nexus A series of Cisco data center networking switches that support Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).

Nexus 1000V (N1KV) The Cisco Nexus 1000V virtual switch is a software-only switch that installs on top of popular hypervisors and allows centralized configuration of virtual Ethernet switches in virtualized environments.

Notifications menu Provides users information about approvals and ongoing orders.

O

OpenStack Open source cloud computing software.

orchestration Combining multiple automation tasks together, such as the configuration, creation, provisioning, etc., of infrastructure.

P–Q

Platform as a Service (PaaS) Delivering platforms such as OS and application stack(s) “as a service” by providing self-service capability, easy service catalog ordering, etc.

port channel The aggregation of multiple Ethernet or Fibre Channel links into a virtual port that is the sum of the individual links’ bandwidth.

Portal Designer A module within Prime Service Catalog responsible for the look, feel, and operations of the end-user portal and ordering system.

PowerShell A popular scripting language developed by Microsoft, used to script tasks in Microsoft environments.

Prime Service Catalog A service ordering solution for self-service, on-demand IT service provisioning and lifecycle management.

Puppet Commonly used by many organizations to deliver PaaS (operating system plus applications). Puppet Labs produces a variety of free and fee-based tools that assist in the automation of many systems, including Linux hosts.

R

RabbitMQ An open source project that provides message broker software that uses AMQP as its messaging protocol.

Report Builder A feature within UCS Director’s CloudSense module that allows the administrator to build standard and custom reports.

Rollback An available action for service requests that will create a new Undo service request that will remove the configuration applied in the initial service request.

S

self-service portal A single place end users can go to order IaaS and PaaS solutions within UCS Director and Prime Service Catalog.

service catalog Organized and curated collection of IT-related offerings that support business requirements.

Service Designer A module within Prime Service Catalog responsible for the configuration and management of service offerings.

service item An individual object that has been ordered by users or assigned to them, including VMs, vDCs, and applications.

service request A record of workflow execution within UCS Director.

showback IT governance policy where the consumption of resources is tracked and value applied to create informational reports without actual transfer of money.

Showcase The front page of the Service Catalog module of Prime Service Catalog.

snapshot A mechanism of quickly capturing the current state of a running system, after which changes are tracked and kept separate, enabling users to easily revert to the beginning state.

software-defined network (SDN) A term to describe various methods by which to make configuration of the network as easy and flexible as configuring virtualized servers revolving around centralized management of policy and network changes.

Stack Designer A tool within Prime Service Catalog that allows administrators to build full suites of application templates that can then be ordered from the service catalog.

Stack View A graphical representation of a virtual machine showing the physical and virtual hardware involved in providing compute, storage, and network resources to the virtual workload.

Standard Catalog An end-user orderable item within UCS Director that will provision a new virtual machine into a given vDC.

Storage Policy Determine on which data store to create the VM disks.

System Policy Configure guest operating system details like hostname, DNS, and time zone.

T

template Prebuilt and standardized set of components and configurations that make up an IT service offering.

Trending Report A type of report in UCS Director that shows the change of a metric over a given time range.

U

UCS Central A manager of multiple UCS domains that allows administrators to manage multiple UCS domains from a single manager of UCS Managers.

UCS Director The Cisco product for automation and orchestration of storage, network, compute, and virtualization of data center infrastructure.

UCS Director Dashboard A view within UCS Director that shows statistics for storage, memory, and CPU usage within a UCS Director pod.

UCS domain A UCS system composed of a pair of Fabric Interconnects and all-blade chassis and/or rackmounts connected to them.

UCS Network Policy A UCS Director Physical Infrastructure Policy that determines the number and configuration of vNICs created within a new service profile.

UCS Performance Manager Cisco’s Performance Management for looking at full stack performance across storage, network, compute, virtualization, as well as storage fabrics.

UCS Storage Policy A UCS Director Physical Infrastructure Policy that determines the number and configuration of vHBAs created within a new service profile.

User Action Policy Provide custom VM actions to end users by linking to workflows.

user groups The ability to group a specified set of users into a group by function, such as End Users, Administrators, etc.

user role A set of privileges assigned to a user type in UCS Director.

V

vDC categories A way to indicate different types of workloads within a vDC and apply different compute, network, storage, etc., policies based on need.

Virtual Application Cloud Segmentation (VACS) A rich set of networking services and interactions between different application tiers used in a Nexus 1000V virtual environment.

virtual data center (vDC) A logical construct into which users deploy virtual machines.

virtual device context (VDC) The ability to virtualize a Nexus switch to run separate/unique L2/L3 services in each VDC.

Virtual Ethernet Module (VEM) In virtual switching such as the Nexus 1000V, analogous to a physical linecard in a modular switch.

Virtual Palo Alto Networks appliance (vPAN) Created by Palo Alto Networks, the vPAN appliance is a hypervisor-based firewall and intrusion detection system.

Virtual Security Gateway (VSG) A Cisco software product that provides virtual security services along with Cisco Nexus 1000V.

Virtual Supervisor Module (VSM) In virtual switching such as the Nexus 1000V, analogous to a physical supervisor in a modular switch.

W–X–Y–Z

widget A dashboard element designed to provide the most important details in the easiest-to-consume fashion.

workflow An automation routine created within UCS Director, composed of one or more tasks, that when executed creates a service request.

Workflow Designer A diagramming-like interface within UCS Director where the administrator can make advanced, multiple-step workflows that can be published in the UCS Director service catalog.

YAML Yet Another Modeling Language, used for the construction of Heat templates.