CompTIA AutoOps+: key terms

Flashcards for this exam CompTIA AutoOps+ guide Class dates

• A/B TestingExperimentation that serves different variants to user groups and compares business metrics to decide which performs better.Foundational
• Alert FatigueDesensitization of responders caused by too many, too noisy, or non-actionable alerts, leading to missed real incidents.Foundational
• AlertmanagerThe Prometheus component that deduplicates, groups, routes, silences, and inhibits alerts and sends notifications.Intermediate
• AnsibleRed Hat's agentless, open-source automation tool that configures systems and network devices using YAML playbooks over SSH, WinRM, or APIs.Foundational
• Ansible Automation Platform (AAP)Red Hat's enterprise automation platform providing automation controller (formerly AWX/Tower), execution environments, Automation Hub, and Event-Driven Ansible.Advanced
• Ansible CollectionA distribution format bundling Ansible modules, plugins, roles, and playbooks under a namespace, shared via Ansible Galaxy or Automation Hub.Intermediate
• Ansible HandlerAn Ansible task that runs only when notified by another task that reported a change, typically to restart services.Intermediate
• Ansible InventoryThe list of managed hosts and groups, with variables, that Ansible targets, written in INI or YAML or generated dynamically.Foundational
• Ansible ModuleA discrete unit of code that Ansible executes to perform a task, such as installing packages or configuring interfaces.Intermediate
• Ansible PlaybookA YAML file containing one or more plays that map groups of hosts to ordered tasks executed with Ansible modules.Foundational
• Ansible RoleA standardized directory structure that packages tasks, handlers, variables, templates, and files for reuse across playbooks.Intermediate
• Ansible VaultAn Ansible feature that encrypts sensitive variables and files with AES-256 so they can be stored in version control.Intermediate
• Application Performance Monitoring (APM)Tooling that instruments applications to track transaction performance, errors, dependencies, and resource usage.Foundational
• Approval GateA pipeline checkpoint that pauses deployment until a person approves or an automated condition is met.Foundational
• Argo CDA declarative GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes that syncs cluster state with manifests stored in Git.Intermediate
• Artifact RepositoryA service that stores and versions build outputs and dependency packages, such as Nexus, Artifactory, Azure Artifacts, AWS CodeArtifact, or GitHub Packages.Intermediate
• Artifact SigningCryptographically signing build artifacts or container images so consumers can verify their origin and integrity.Advanced
• AWS CloudFormationAWS's native infrastructure as code service that provisions resources from JSON or YAML templates as stacks.Foundational
• BackstageAn open-source CNCF framework, originally from Spotify, for building developer portals with a software catalog, templates, and plugins.Intermediate
• Blameless PostmortemA written review of an incident that focuses on systemic causes and improvements rather than assigning individual fault.Foundational
• Blue-Green DeploymentA release strategy using two identical production environments, switching all traffic from the current (blue) to the new (green) version at once.Intermediate
• Build ArtifactA versioned output of a build, such as a compiled binary, package, or container image, that is promoted through environments.Foundational
• Build CacheReusing previously downloaded dependencies or build outputs between pipeline runs to speed up builds.Intermediate
• Build Once, Deploy ManyThe principle that a single immutable build artifact is created once and promoted unchanged to every environment.Foundational
• Burn RateHow fast a service is consuming its error budget relative to the rate that would exactly exhaust it at the end of the SLO window.Advanced
• CALMS FrameworkA DevOps maturity model covering Culture, Automation, Lean, Measurement, and Sharing.Foundational
• Canary DeploymentReleasing a new model to a small fraction of traffic first, then increasing gradually if metrics are healthy.Intermediate
• Capacity PlanningForecasting the compute, storage, and network resources a service needs to meet demand and SLOs.Intermediate
• CardinalityIn observability, the number of unique time series created by the combinations of metric label values.Advanced
• Change Failure Rate (CFR)A DORA metric measuring the percentage of deployments that cause a failure in production requiring remediation.Foundational
• Chaos EngineeringThe discipline of experimenting on a system by injecting controlled failures to build confidence in its resilience.Intermediate
• ChefAn agent-based configuration management tool (now Progress Chef) that uses Ruby-based recipes and cookbooks.Foundational
• CI/CD PipelineAn automated sequence of stages that takes code from commit through build, test, and deployment.Foundational
• cloud-initThe industry-standard tool for initializing cloud instances at first boot using user data.Intermediate
• Code CoverageThe percentage of code executed by automated tests, measured by lines, branches, or functions.Foundational
• Configuration DriftDivergence between the actual configuration of a system and its intended, documented, or code-defined state.Intermediate
• Configuration ManagementMaintaining systems in a known, consistent desired state by automating the configuration of operating systems, software, and settings.Foundational
• ContainerA lightweight, isolated runtime environment that packages an application with its dependencies and shares the host operating system kernel.Foundational
• Container ImageAn immutable, layered package containing an application, its runtime, libraries, and configuration, used to create containers.Foundational
• Continuous Delivery (CD)The practice of keeping software always in a releasable state, with every change automatically built, tested, and deployable to production on demand.Foundational
• Continuous DeploymentThe practice of automatically releasing every change that passes all pipeline stages to production without human intervention.Foundational
• Continuous Integration (CI)The practice of merging code changes into a shared branch frequently, with each change automatically built and tested.Foundational
• Dark LaunchDeploying a feature to production while hiding it from users, so it can be tested with real traffic or infrastructure before release.Intermediate
• Declarative ConfigurationSpecifying the desired end state of a system and letting a tool determine the steps to reach it.Foundational
• Dependency ManagementDeclaring, resolving, pinning, and updating the external libraries an application relies on.Foundational
• Deployment FrequencyA DORA metric measuring how often an organization successfully deploys code to production.Foundational
• DevOpsA culture and set of practices that unify software development and IT operations to deliver changes quickly, safely, and reliably.Foundational
• DevSecOpsThe integration of security practices and automated security testing into every stage of the DevOps pipeline.Intermediate
• Distributed TracingTracking a single request as it flows across multiple services by propagating a trace context and recording timed spans.Intermediate
• Distroless ImageA minimal container image containing only the application and its runtime dependencies, without a shell or package manager.Advanced
• DockerA platform and toolset for building, shipping, and running containers, including Docker Engine, the docker CLI, Docker Compose, and Docker Desktop.Foundational
• Docker ComposeA tool for defining and running multi-container applications using a compose.yaml file.Foundational
• Docker EngineThe client-server application consisting of the dockerd daemon, a REST API, and the docker CLI that builds and runs containers.Intermediate
• Docker LayerA read-only filesystem diff produced by a Dockerfile instruction; images are stacks of layers combined by a union filesystem.Intermediate
• DockerfileA text file of instructions (FROM, RUN, COPY, CMD, and others) that Docker uses to build a container image.Foundational
• DORA MetricsFour key software delivery metrics from the DevOps Research and Assessment program: deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, and recovery time.Intermediate
• Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)Testing a running application from the outside by sending crafted requests to find vulnerabilities.Intermediate
• Elastic Stack (ELK)A log and search platform made up of Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, and Beats, commonly called the ELK stack.Foundational
• End-to-End Test (E2E)An automated test that validates a complete user workflow through the entire application stack.Foundational
• Environment PromotionMoving the same tested artifact through successive environments such as dev, test, staging, and production.Foundational
• EnvoyA high-performance CNCF graduated L4/L7 proxy designed for cloud-native applications and used as the data plane of many service meshes.Advanced
• Ephemeral EnvironmentA short-lived, automatically created environment for testing a branch or pull request, destroyed after use.Intermediate
• Error BudgetThe allowable amount of unreliability for a service, equal to 100% minus the SLO, which teams can spend on releases and risk.Intermediate
• Error Budget PolicyAn agreed set of actions a team takes when a service consumes or exhausts its error budget.Advanced
• Event-Driven AutomationAutomation that triggers workflows in response to events such as alerts, webhooks, telemetry thresholds, or log messages.Advanced
• Failed Deployment Recovery TimeA DORA metric, formerly called time to restore service (MTTR), measuring how long it takes to recover from a failed deployment.Intermediate
• Feature FlagA runtime switch that enables or disables functionality without deploying new code, also called a feature toggle.Intermediate
• Flaky TestAn automated test that passes and fails intermittently without code changes.Intermediate
• FluentdAn open-source CNCF graduated log collector that unifies log collection, parsing, buffering, and routing to many outputs.Intermediate
• FluxA CNCF graduated GitOps toolkit that keeps Kubernetes clusters in sync with configuration sources such as Git repositories and OCI artifacts.Intermediate
• Four Golden SignalsThe four key metrics Google SRE recommends monitoring for any user-facing system: latency, traffic, errors, and saturation.Foundational
• Game DayA planned exercise where teams simulate failures or incidents to test systems, runbooks, and response processes.Intermediate
• GitA free, open-source distributed version control system that tracks changes to files and enables collaborative development.Foundational
• GitHub ActionsGitHub's integrated CI/CD and automation platform that runs YAML-defined workflows in response to repository events.Foundational
• GitLab CI/CDGitLab's built-in CI/CD system, configured with a .gitlab-ci.yml file defining stages and jobs run by GitLab Runners.Foundational
• GitOpsAn operating model where desired infrastructure and app state is stored declaratively in Git and automatically reconciled to the live environment.Intermediate
• Golden PathAn opinionated, supported, well-documented way to build and deploy a particular type of software within an organization.Intermediate
• GrafanaAn open-source visualization and dashboarding platform that queries data sources such as Prometheus, Loki, Elasticsearch, and cloud monitoring services.Foundational
• HashiCorp VaultA secrets management tool that stores static secrets, generates dynamic credentials, and provides encryption as a service.Intermediate
• Health Check EndpointAn HTTP endpoint such as /healthz or /ready that reports whether a service is alive and able to serve requests.Foundational
• HelmThe package manager for Kubernetes that templates, installs, upgrades, and rolls back applications packaged as charts.Intermediate
• Helm ChartA Helm package containing Chart.yaml, values.yaml, and Go-templated Kubernetes manifests in a templates directory.Intermediate
• Helm ReleaseA specific installed instance of a Helm chart in a cluster, tracked with a name and revision history.Intermediate
• Helm RepositoryAn HTTP server or OCI registry that hosts packaged Helm charts and an index for discovery.Intermediate
• Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA)A Kubernetes controller that scales the number of pod replicas based on CPU, memory, or custom metrics.Intermediate
• HotfixAn urgent fix applied to production to resolve a critical defect, usually outside the normal release cadence.Foundational
• IdempotencyThe property that applying the same operation multiple times produces the same result as applying it once.Foundational
• Image DigestThe immutable sha256 content hash that uniquely identifies a specific container image manifest.Intermediate
• Image ScanningAnalyzing container images for known vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, secrets, and license issues.Intermediate
• Immutable InfrastructureAn approach where servers or containers are never modified after deployment; changes are made by replacing them with new instances built from a new image.Intermediate
• Imperative ConfigurationSpecifying the explicit sequence of commands or steps needed to change a system's state.Foundational
• Incident Commander (IC)The person who coordinates the overall response to a major incident, delegating work and managing communication rather than fixing the issue directly.Intermediate
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC)Managing and provisioning infrastructure through machine-readable definition files rather than manual configuration.Foundational
• Infrastructure PipelineA CI/CD pipeline that validates, plans, and applies infrastructure as code changes.Intermediate
• Integration TestAn automated test that verifies multiple components or services work together correctly.Foundational
• Internal Developer Platform (IDP)A self-service layer, built by a platform team, that lets developers provision environments and deploy applications without filing tickets.Intermediate
• IstioA CNCF graduated open-source service mesh using Envoy proxies to provide traffic management, security, and observability.Advanced
• JaegerAn open-source CNCF graduated distributed tracing platform for collecting, storing, and visualizing traces.Intermediate
• JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)A lightweight, text-based data interchange format of objects (key-value pairs) and arrays, widely used by REST APIs.Foundational
• JenkinsA widely used open-source automation server for building CI/CD pipelines, extended through thousands of plugins.Foundational
• Jinja2A Python templating engine used by Ansible, Salt, and network automation scripts to generate configurations from variables.Intermediate
• Kubernetes (K8s)An open-source CNCF container orchestration platform that automates deployment, scaling, networking, and self-healing of containerized applications.Foundational
• KustomizeA template-free tool, built into kubectl, that customizes Kubernetes YAML using bases, overlays, and patches.Intermediate
• KyvernoA CNCF Kubernetes-native policy engine that validates, mutates, generates, and verifies resources using policies written as YAML.Advanced
• Lead Time for ChangesA DORA metric measuring the time from code being committed to that code running successfully in production.Foundational
• LinkerdA lightweight CNCF graduated service mesh that uses its own Rust-based micro-proxy to add mTLS, reliability, and observability.Advanced
• LintingAutomated static checking of source code or configuration for style issues, errors, and suspicious constructs.Foundational
• Log AggregationCollecting logs from many systems into a central store for search, correlation, retention, and alerting.Foundational
• LokiA horizontally scalable log aggregation system from Grafana Labs that indexes only log labels, not full log content.Advanced
• Metric TypesThe kinds of metrics used in monitoring systems such as Prometheus: counter, gauge, histogram, and summary.Intermediate
• Microservices ArchitectureAn architectural style that structures an application as small, independently deployable services communicating over APIs.Foundational
• MonitoringCollecting, aggregating, and alerting on predefined metrics and checks to detect known failure conditions.Foundational
• Multi-Stage BuildA Dockerfile technique using multiple FROM stages so build tools stay in early stages and only needed artifacts are copied to the final image.Intermediate
• Mutable InfrastructureInfrastructure that is updated in place after provisioning, for example by patching or reconfiguring running servers.Foundational
• Mutual TLS (mTLS)TLS in which both client and server present and verify certificates, providing two-way authentication and encryption.Intermediate
• NetBoxAn open-source network source of truth for IPAM and DCIM data, with REST and GraphQL APIs used to drive automation.Intermediate
• ObservabilityThe ability to understand a system's internal state from its external outputs, typically metrics, logs, and traces.Foundational
• On-Call RotationA schedule that assigns engineers responsibility for responding to production alerts during defined periods.Foundational
• Open Policy Agent (OPA)A CNCF graduated general-purpose policy engine that evaluates policies written in Rego against JSON input.Advanced
• OpenID Connect for CI/CD (OIDC)Using short-lived OIDC tokens issued by a CI platform to authenticate to cloud providers without storing long-lived credentials.Advanced
• OpenTelemetry (OTel)A CNCF open standard and set of SDKs, APIs, and a collector for generating and exporting metrics, logs, and traces vendor-neutrally.Intermediate
• OpenTelemetry CollectorA vendor-agnostic agent or gateway that receives, processes, and exports telemetry data using pipelines of receivers, processors, and exporters.Advanced
• OpenTofuAn open-source, Linux Foundation-hosted fork of Terraform created after HashiCorp's license change, compatible with most Terraform configurations.Intermediate
• PackerA HashiCorp tool that builds identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single HCL template.Intermediate
• Percentile LatencyA latency measure, such as p95 or p99, indicating the value below which a given percentage of requests fall.Intermediate
• Pets vs CattleAn analogy contrasting uniquely cared-for servers (pets) with interchangeable, replaceable servers (cattle).Foundational
• Pipeline as CodeDefining CI/CD pipelines in version-controlled files, usually YAML, stored alongside application code.Foundational
• Platform EngineeringThe discipline of building and running internal self-service platforms that give developers paved paths to build, deploy, and operate software.Intermediate
• Policy as CodeExpressing security, compliance, and operational policies in code that is versioned and automatically evaluated.Intermediate
• PowerShell Desired State Configuration (DSC)A Microsoft declarative configuration management platform for defining and enforcing the configuration of Windows and cross-platform systems.Advanced
• Progressive DeliveryAn evolution of continuous delivery that releases changes gradually with automated analysis, using canaries, feature flags, and traffic shaping.Advanced
• PrometheusAn open-source CNCF graduated monitoring system and time-series database that scrapes metrics over HTTP and supports alerting with PromQL.Intermediate
• Prometheus ExporterA process that exposes metrics from a third-party system in Prometheus format on an HTTP endpoint.Intermediate
• PromQLThe Prometheus Query Language used to select, aggregate, and compute on time-series metrics.Advanced
• PulumiAn infrastructure as code platform that defines cloud resources using general-purpose languages like Python, TypeScript, Go, and C#.Intermediate
• PuppetAn agent-based configuration management tool using a declarative DSL in manifests and modules, with agents pulling catalogs from a server.Foundational
• Push vs Pull Configuration ModelWhether a central server pushes configuration to nodes or nodes periodically pull configuration from a server.Intermediate
• PushgatewayA Prometheus component that lets short-lived or batch jobs push metrics so Prometheus can scrape them later.Advanced
• pytestA popular Python testing framework that discovers test_*.py files and uses plain assert statements with rich failure reporting.Intermediate
• PythonA high-level, interpreted, general-purpose programming language widely used for automation, scripting, data processing, and network programmability.Foundational
• Quality GateA set of automated pass/fail criteria, such as test pass rate, coverage, or vulnerability thresholds, that a build must meet to proceed.Intermediate
• Real User Monitoring (RUM)Collecting performance and error data from actual users' browsers or devices as they interact with an application.Intermediate
• Reconciliation LoopThe control-loop pattern in which a controller repeatedly compares desired state with actual state and acts to close the gap.Intermediate
• Red Hat OpenShiftRed Hat's enterprise Kubernetes platform that adds integrated developer tools, security defaults, operators, and a web console.Intermediate
• RED MethodA request-centric monitoring approach tracking Rate, Errors, and Duration for every service.Intermediate
• Regression TestRe-running tests after a change to ensure previously working functionality still works.Foundational
• Remote BackendA Terraform backend that stores state remotely, such as in S3, Azure Blob Storage, Google Cloud Storage, or HCP Terraform, enabling team sharing and locking.Intermediate
• Resilience TestingTesting how a system tolerates and recovers from failures, load spikes, and degraded dependencies.Intermediate
• Roll ForwardFixing a failed release by deploying a new corrective version rather than reverting to the previous one.Intermediate
• RollbackReverting a system to a previous known-good version after a failed or problematic change.Foundational
• Root Cause Analysis (RCA)A structured investigation to identify the underlying causes of an incident so they can be eliminated.Foundational
• RunbookA documented procedure describing how to perform a routine operational task or respond to a specific alert.Foundational
• RunnerA machine or container that executes CI/CD jobs, called a runner in GitHub Actions and GitLab and an agent in Azure Pipelines and Jenkins.Foundational
• SaltA Python-based configuration management and remote execution tool (SaltStack, now owned by Broadcom) using a master/minion architecture over a ZeroMQ event bus.Intermediate
• ScriptingWriting small programs, typically in interpreted languages such as Bash, Python, or PowerShell, to automate repetitive tasks.Foundational
• Secret ScanningAutomatically detecting credentials such as API keys, tokens, and passwords committed to source repositories.Intermediate
• Secrets ManagementSecurely storing, distributing, rotating, and auditing credentials such as passwords, API keys, and certificates.Foundational
• Semantic Versioning (SemVer)A versioning scheme of MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH where major indicates breaking changes, minor adds compatible features, and patch fixes bugs.Foundational
• SentinelHashiCorp's policy-as-code framework that enforces rules on Terraform runs in HCP Terraform and Terraform Enterprise.Advanced
• Service Level Agreement (SLA)Contractual commitment from a provider defining service availability or performance targets and remedies if they are missed.Foundational
• Service Level Indicator (SLI)A quantitative measure of some aspect of a service's level of service, such as request latency, error rate, or availability.Foundational
• Service Level Objective (SLO)A target value or range for an SLI over a time window, such as 99.9% of requests succeeding over 30 days.Foundational
• Service MeshAn infrastructure layer that manages service-to-service communication with traffic management, mTLS security, and observability, usually via proxies.Intermediate
• Shift LeftThe practice of moving testing, security, and quality activities earlier in the software delivery lifecycle.Foundational
• Shift-Right TestingTesting and validating software in production using monitoring, canaries, feature flags, chaos experiments, and real user data.Intermediate
• Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)A discipline, created at Google, that applies software engineering to operations problems to build scalable and highly reliable systems.Foundational
• Smoke TestA quick, shallow test run after a build or deployment to confirm the most critical functions work.Foundational
• Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)A formal, machine-readable inventory of all components and dependencies in a piece of software.Intermediate
• Software Composition Analysis (SCA)Identifying open-source and third-party dependencies in software and checking them for known vulnerabilities and license issues.Intermediate
• SpanA single named, timed operation within a distributed trace, such as an HTTP call or database query.Intermediate
• Static Application Security Testing (SAST)Analyzing source code, bytecode, or binaries for security vulnerabilities without executing the application.Intermediate
• Structured LoggingWriting log events as machine-parseable key-value data, typically JSON, rather than free-form text.Foundational
• Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA)An OpenSSF security framework of graduated levels for ensuring the integrity of build processes and artifact provenance.Advanced
• Synthetic MonitoringProactively testing an application by running scripted transactions or probes from external locations at regular intervals.Intermediate
• TektonA Kubernetes-native open-source framework for building CI/CD pipelines using custom resources such as Task and Pipeline.Advanced
• TerraformHashiCorp's infrastructure as code tool that provisions resources across many providers using declarative HCL configuration.Foundational
• Terraform ModuleA reusable container of Terraform resources; every configuration is a root module that can call child modules.Intermediate
• Terraform PlanThe Terraform command that compares configuration with state and real infrastructure to show proposed create, update, and destroy actions.Foundational
• Terraform StateThe file (terraform.tfstate) in which Terraform records the mapping between configuration and real resources, plus metadata.Intermediate
• Terraform WorkflowThe core Terraform lifecycle: write configuration, then init, plan, apply, and eventually destroy.Foundational
• Test PyramidA testing strategy model recommending many fast unit tests, fewer integration tests, and very few end-to-end tests.Intermediate
• Three Pillars of ObservabilityThe three primary telemetry types used for observability: metrics, logs, and traces.Foundational
• Three Ways of DevOpsThe principles from The Phoenix Project and The DevOps Handbook: flow, feedback, and continual learning and experimentation.Intermediate
• ToilManual, repetitive, automatable, tactical operational work that scales linearly with service growth and has no enduring value.Foundational
• Traffic MirroringCopying live production requests to a new service version for testing without affecting responses returned to users.Advanced
• Trunk-Based DevelopmentA branching model where developers integrate small changes into a single main branch (trunk) at least daily.Intermediate
• Twelve-Factor AppA methodology of twelve best practices for building portable, scalable, cloud-native software-as-a-service applications.Intermediate
• Unit TestAn automated test that verifies a small, isolated piece of code, such as a function or class, independent of external dependencies.Foundational
• USE MethodA resource-centric performance analysis method checking Utilization, Saturation, and Errors for every resource.Intermediate
• Value Stream Mapping (VSM)A Lean technique that visualizes every step, wait time, and handoff required to deliver a change from request to customer.Intermediate
• Virtual Environment (venv)An isolated Python environment with its own interpreter link and installed packages, separate from the system Python.Foundational
• W3C Trace ContextA W3C standard defining the traceparent and tracestate HTTP headers used to propagate trace identifiers between services.Advanced
• WebhookAn HTTP callback in which a system sends an HTTP POST to a configured URL when an event occurs.Foundational
• YAML Ain't Markup LanguageA human-friendly data serialization format using indentation for structure, used by Ansible, Kubernetes, and CI pipelines.Foundational