Glossary

This glossary is intended to be a comprehensive, uniform list of Ankaios terminology. It consists of technical terms specific to Ankaios, as well as more general terms that provide useful context.

Node

A machine, either physical or virtual, that provides the necessary prerequisites (e.g. OS) to run an Ankaios server and/or agent.

Runtime

The base an which a workload can be started. For OCI container this is a container runtime or engine. For native applications the runtime is the OS itself.

Workload

A functionality that the Ankaios orchestrator can manage (e.g. start, stop). A workload could be packed inside an OCI container (e.g. Podman container) or could also be just a native program (native workload). Ankaios is build to be extensible for different workload types by adding support for other runtimes.

Container

A container is a lightweight, standalone, executable software package that includes everything needed to run an application, including the binaries, runtime, system libraries and dependencies. Containers provide a consistent and isolated environment for applications to run, ensuring that they behave consistently across different computing environments, from development to testing to production.

Podman container

A Podman container refers to a container managed by Podman, which is an open-source container engine similar to Docker. Podman aims to provide a simple and secure container management solution for developers and system administrators.

Native workload

An application developed specifically for a particular platform or operating system (OS). It is designed to run directly on the target platform without the need for bringing in any additional translation or emulation layers.