Cloud platforms, FinOps, DevOps and the infrastructure behind every digital business.
How Reserved Instances, Savings Plans and committed use discounts work on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, and how to size a commitment without overbuying.
A plain-English guide to the parts of a cloud bill: compute, storage, requests, data transfer and discounts, with a worked estimate you can adapt.
A neutral, use-case-by-use-case comparison of AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, including how their pricing and discount models really work.
Serverless computing lets you run code without managing servers. You upload small functions, the cloud provider runs them only when an event triggers them, scales them automatically and …
Cloud computing means renting computing power, storage and software over the internet instead of buying and running your own servers. You pay for what you use, scale up …
A CDN, or content delivery network, is a network of servers in many locations that store copies of your website's files, such as images and scripts. Visitors get …
Choose cloud when you want low upfront cost, fast scaling, remote access and less hardware upkeep. Choose on-premise when you need full control, have steady heavy workloads that …
Public cloud shares a provider's infrastructure across many customers and suits most businesses because it is fast, flexible and pay-as-you-go. Private cloud dedicates infrastructure to one organization for …
IaaS rents you raw infrastructure such as virtual servers and storage, and you manage the operating system and everything above it. PaaS gives developers a managed platform to …
Multi-cloud means using cloud services from 2 or more providers, such as AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, at the same time. Done deliberately, it can add resilience, …
Virtualization is technology that lets one physical computer run several isolated virtual machines (VMs), each with its own operating system and applications. A software layer called a hypervisor …
Docker and Kubernetes solve different problems, so it is not really either-or. Docker packages an application into a container image and runs containers on a machine. Kubernetes manages …
Virtual machines virtualize hardware, so each one runs its own full operating system on a hypervisor. Containers virtualize the operating system, so they share the host's kernel and …
Helm is the package manager for Kubernetes. It bundles the YAML files an application needs into a reusable package called a chart, lets you customize it with a …
Docker is a platform for packaging an application and everything it needs into a container, a lightweight, isolated unit that runs the same way on any computer or …
Infrastructure as code (IaC) means defining servers, networks, databases and cloud settings in text files instead of clicking through consoles. A tool such as Terraform, AWS CloudFormation or …
EKS, AKS and GKE all run upstream Kubernetes with a managed control plane. GKE offers the most hands-off option through Autopilot, AKS has a free control plane tier …
To containerize an application, write a Dockerfile that starts from a small official base image, copies in your dependency files, installs dependencies, copies your code and sets the …
Use Terraform to provision infrastructure such as networks, servers, databases and cloud services, because it tracks what exists in a state file and plans changes before applying them. …
DevOps is a broad culture and set of practices for getting development and operations to share ownership of software delivery. Site reliability engineering (SRE) is a specific, more …
DevOps is a way of working in which the people who build software and the people who run it share responsibility for getting changes to users quickly and …
GitOps is a way of running deployments where a Git repository holds the desired state of your systems, and an automated agent keeps the live environment matching it. …
DORA metrics are 5 research-backed measures of software delivery from Google's DevOps Research and Assessment program. Change lead time, deployment frequency and failed deployment recovery time measure throughput. …
DevSecOps is DevOps with security built into every stage of software delivery instead of checked at the end. Automated scans run as code is written, built, tested and …
To adopt DevOps in a small team, start with the basics in order: put all code and configuration in version control, add automated tests that run on every …
Agile is a way of planning and building software in short, customer-focused iterations, with frameworks such as Scrum and Kanban. DevOps extends those ideas past development into testing, …
Shift-left testing means moving testing earlier in the software lifecycle, closer to when code is written, instead of saving it for a QA phase just before release. Developers …
To set up a sustainable on-call rotation, put enough people on the schedule that each person is on call about one week in four or less, pair a …
To write a blameless postmortem, document the incident's impact, a timestamped timeline, contributing causes and what went well, then agree on owned, dated action items. Focus on how …
Monitoring watches known signals, such as error rates or CPU, and alerts you when they cross a threshold. Observability is the ability to understand why a system behaves …
High availability means designing a system to keep working when individual parts fail, usually measured as an uptime percentage such as 99.9% or 99.99%. You get there by …
OpenTelemetry is an open-source, vendor-neutral standard and toolkit for collecting traces, metrics and logs from your software. You instrument code once with its APIs, SDKs or automatic agents, …
Chaos engineering is the practice of deliberately injecting controlled failures, such as crashed servers, slow networks or a lost dependency, into a system to see whether it keeps …
An SLI (service level indicator) is a measurement, such as the share of requests that succeed. An SLO (service level objective) is your internal target for that measurement, …
Site reliability engineering (SRE) is an approach, started at Google, that treats running software in production as an engineering problem. SRE teams set measurable reliability targets, use error …
Choose GitHub Actions if your code lives on GitHub and you want hosted runners with no servers to manage. Choose GitLab CI/CD if you want source control, pipelines …
CI/CD is a set of practices that automatically build, test and release software. Continuous integration (CI) means developers merge small changes into a shared codebase often, with automated …
Feature flags are switches in your code that turn a feature on or off at runtime without a new deployment. Teams use them to ship unfinished work safely, …
To build a CI/CD pipeline, put your code in Git, choose a CI/CD platform, then add 3 stages in a config file: build the app, run automated tests, …
The difference is one manual step. In continuous delivery, every change that passes the pipeline is ready to release, but a person approves the production deployment. In continuous …
Use blue-green deployment when you want the fastest, simplest rollback and can afford to run two full environments during a release. Use canary deployment when you want to …
Secure a CI/CD pipeline in priority order. First, lock down who can change code and pipeline files. Second, remove long-lived secrets and use short-lived credentials such as OIDC. …
The biggest cloud computing trends in 2026 are AI workloads driving GPU and inference spending, sovereign cloud options for regulated and EU data, FinOps expanding to cover AI …
Reserved Instances commit you to a specific instance type or family in a region for 1 or 3 years, while Savings Plans commit you to a dollar-per-hour spend …
Cloud repatriation means moving workloads from public cloud back to your own servers, colocation or private cloud. It can make sense for large, steady, predictable workloads where owned …
Cloud pricing is pay-as-you-go: you are billed for compute by the second or hour, storage by the gigabyte per month, requests by the thousand and data transfer out …
The shared responsibility model splits cloud security between the provider and the customer. The provider secures the physical data centers, hardware and core infrastructure. The customer always remains …
You avoid cloud vendor lock-in by keeping your data portable, packaging apps in containers, defining infrastructure as code, preferring open standards and open-source tools, and isolating provider-specific services …
To read a cloud SLA, convert the uptime percentage into allowed downtime (99.9% is about 43 minutes a month), check which deployment setup qualifies, read the service credit …
AIOps (AI for IT operations) uses machine learning and analytics on monitoring data such as metrics, logs, traces and events to cut alert noise, spot anomalies, group related …
RTO (recovery time objective) is how long a system can be down before the outage causes unacceptable harm. RPO (recovery point objective) is how much data, measured in …
ITSM (IT service management) is the way an organization designs, delivers, supports and improves the IT services people rely on. In practice it means handling incidents, service requests, …
Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) continuously copies your servers and data to a provider's cloud so you can switch over and keep running if your own systems …
AWS, Azure and Google Cloud can all run almost any modern workload, so the right choice depends on fit. Azure suits Microsoft-heavy companies, Google Cloud is strong for …
A cloud migration checklist covers 4 phases: assess and inventory every workload, plan a secure landing zone and pick a strategy for each app using the 7 Rs, …
Kubernetes is open-source software that runs and manages containerized applications across a group of servers. It schedules containers, restarts failed ones, scales them with demand and rolls out …
FinOps is a practice that helps organizations manage cloud spending by bringing engineering, finance and business teams together. It follows an inform, optimize and operate lifecycle: making costs …
A server that sits in front of backend services and handles routing, authentication, rate limiting, and monitoring for API requests.
Auto ScalingA cloud feature that automatically adds or removes computing resources based on demand, so applications stay responsive without overpaying.
BandwidthThe maximum amount of data that can be transmitted over a network connection in a given time, usually measured in bits per second.
Blue-Green DeploymentA release method that runs two identical production environments and switches traffic from the old one to the new one once it is ready.
CI/CDContinuous Integration and Continuous Delivery or Deployment: practices that automatically build, test, and release code changes.
Canary ReleaseA deployment approach that sends a new software version to a small share of users first, then expands it if no problems appear.
Cloud BackupCopying data from computers, servers, or applications to storage run by a cloud provider so it can be restored if the original is lost.
Cloud ComputingDelivering computing resources such as servers, storage, databases, and software over the internet on a pay-as-you-go basis.
Cloud MigrationThe process of moving applications, data, and workloads from on-premises servers or one cloud to a cloud environment.
ContainerA lightweight, portable package that bundles an application with its dependencies so it runs the same way across different environments.
Content Delivery NetworkA geographically distributed network of servers that delivers web content from locations close to each user to improve speed.
Data CenterA facility that houses servers, storage, and networking equipment, along with the power and cooling systems needed to run them.
DevOpsA culture and set of practices that unite software development and IT operations to deliver software faster and more reliably.
Disaster RecoveryThe plans, tools, and processes an organization uses to restore its IT systems and data after a major outage, attack, or disaster.
DockerA popular platform for building, sharing, and running applications inside containers.
Domain Name SystemThe internet's directory service that translates human-friendly domain names into the numeric IP addresses computers use.