EGI Federated Cloud Glossary

This document serves for discussion in the EGI Federated Cloud, to propose terms to general glossary and other teams of EGI.

Common used terms in EGI Federated Cloud

VM instance (instance)

complete emulation of a particular computer system that supports the execution of a complete operating system (OS). Multiple instances of virtual machines can co-exist on the same hardware with complete isolation between them.

VM image (VMI or image)

A representation of the file system of a virtual machine, usually including a pre-configured operating system (OS) environment and a set of pre-installed applications.

Virtual Appliances (VA)

ready-to-run virtual machines images packaged with an operating system and software application(s). Virtual Appliances are versioned, each Virtual Appliance Version (VA version) provides a list of the images that constitutes the said Virtual Appliance.

Contextualization Script

script launched during an instance boot time that can be used for installing, configuring and preparing software upon boot time from a pre-defined virtual machine image

Software Appliances (SA)

composed by a Virtual Appliance and a Contextualization Script pair

VM image creator (creator)

Someone who creates a VM image, but does not necessarily endorse it

VA Endorser (endorser)

A role, held either by an individual or a team, who is responsible for confirming that the VM images of a particular VA version have been produced according to the requirements of the EGI policies and states that the VA version can be trusted. An Endorser should be one of a limited number of authorised and trusted individuals appointed either by the infrastructure, a VO or a resource centre. The appointing body must assume responsibility for the actions of the Endorser and must ensure that he/she is aware of the requirements of the policies.

VM instance operator (operator)

A role, held either by an individual or a team, who is able to create VM instances and is responsible for the security of the instance during its operation phase, from the time it is instantiated, until it is terminated. Typically this addresses individuals with root access on the VM. Operators are the users of the EGI FedCloud.

VM instance consumer (consumer)

A role held by an individual who consumes with no level of management privilege the services operated on or by a instance.

Endorsement

Action of confirming that a given VA version as produced according to the requirements of the EGI policies. The endorsement must be traceable with the endorser signature and timestamp when it was produced.