Glossary

Refer to the following list of terms and definitions to learn about important IBM® Cloud Pak for Network Automation concepts.

Orchestration terminology

assembly: An assembly is a definition of a service and may comprise of one resource (or component), (or more than one resource), and/or other assemblies.; It is defined in an assembly descriptor and can be instantiated as an assembly instance.
assembly descriptor (or descriptor): An assembly descriptor is a computer-readable definition of an assembly implemented as a YAML file.
assembly designer (or service designer): An actor or end user role designing services using the orchestration component. An assembly designer takes informal service design artifacts defined by service designers and translates them to a set of formal computer-readable descriptors that model the target service.
assembly instance: Instantiation of an assembly descriptor and all the composed resources or assemblies.
capability: Capabilities is a section of an assembly descriptor or a resource descriptor defining what functions the resources or assemblies are implementing.
catalog (or assembly catalog): The repository within the orchestration component that stores published assembly descriptors and resources descriptors.
cloud: The cloud is a common term referring to accessing computer, information technology (IT), and software applications through a network connection, often by accessing data centers using wide area networking (WAN) or internet connectivity.
CSAR (or archive): Cloud service archive (CSAR) describes a format used for describing resource packages.; CSAR specification is a part of OASIS TOSCA.
deployment location: Deployment locations specify where the network automation software deploys resources when the resources are instantiated. Deployment locations are associated with a specific infrastructure type such as Red Hat® OpenShift®, Kubernetes, AWS, Azure, OpenStack, and others.; Deployment locations allow for a set of properties that are associated with the underlying infrastructure to be available to resources. The values in deployment locations are stored securely, so you can use them to store secure information such as keys and passwords.
descriptor: See assembly descriptor (or descriptor)
forwarding graph: See service chain.
intent engine (or engine): The entity responsible for generating the assembly deployment plan and instructing, step by step, the Brent resource manager to execute the plan.
Kafka: Apache Kafka is a distributed streaming platform.; Tip: Streams of records are stored in Kafka in categories called 'topics'.
lifecycle event (or event): An intent and status change event published by the orchestration component onto a Kafka topic.
lifecycle state (or state): A lifecycle state defines the state of a specific resource instance or assembly instance.; Examples of lifecycle states include: Installed, Inactive, Active, Broken, and Failed.; Changes from one lifecycle state to another are lifecycle transitions.
lifecycle transition (or transition): A lifecycle transition is a process aiming to change the lifecycle state of an assembly or resource.; Lifecycle transitions are initiated through the orchestration API, orchestrated, then executed by the underlying Brent resource manager.; Examples of lifecycle transitions include: install, configure, start, stop, integrity, and uninstall.
microservice: Microservices are a variant of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) architectural style that structures an application as a collection of loosely coupled services.; The benefit of decomposing an application into different smaller services is that it improves modularity and makes the application easier to understand, develop and test.; It also parallelizes development by enabling small autonomous teams to develop, deploy and scale their respective services independently.
migration: Migration is one of the opinionated patterns aiming to migrate a deployed NVF from a location to another.
monitoring metrics: Performance or health metrics published by resources onto a Kafka topic.
network: A type of resource.
network function virtualization (NFV): The design and integration of external resources into virtual production environments, which can then automate the management of end-to-end lifecycle processes.; Also see virtual network functions.
OASIS: OASIS is a non-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society.
onboarding: Onboarding is the act of adding the Brent resource manager to the orchestration component. It lets the orchestration component know that Brent exists, and it imports the descriptors of all the resource types managed by Brent. It also gathers the information about the deployment locations that Brent uses.
operations: 'Operations' is a section of an assembly descriptor or a resource descriptor that defines sets of operations, which can be called to enable relationships to be created between resources and/or assemblies.
opinionated patterns: The group of lifecycle transitions to achieve a particular task.; Examples of tasks include: heal, reconfigure, and upgrade.
property: 'Properties' is a section of an assembly descriptor or a resource descriptor containing the properties that belong to the resource or assembly descriptors.; These include the full set of properties that are required to orchestrate them through to the active state.; These can be understood as the 'context' for the management of the item during its lifecycle.
quality monitoring: Quality Monitoring is a process to monitor the health of deployed resources and NFV infrastructure and to test, monitor and evaluate the end-to-end service performance.
reference: 'Reference' is a section of assembly descriptor or resource descriptor.; When the orchestration component has already instantiated an assembly it is possible for another assembly to share the instance by referencing it within the references section.; The references section can also refer to existing objects that may have been created outside the orchestration component.
relationship: 'Relationships' is a section of assembly descriptor or resource descriptor.; Relationships define how the descriptors link requirements to capabilities.; A relationship has source-capabilities and target-requirements as parts of its description.
requirement: 'Requirements' is a section of an assembly descriptor or a resource descriptor explaining what functions the resources or assemblies need before they can work successfully.
resource (or component): A piece of software that can be automatically deployed in a virtual environment, and that supports key lifecycle states including install, configure, start, stop, and uninstall.
resource descriptor: The list of resource attributes and properties written in YAML.
resource instance: A resource instance represents the logical grouping of infrastructure being managed by the Brent resource manager.
resource manager: The entity instructing resources, that is, Brent.
resource package: Resource package is described as a CSAR archive.; This is the bundle of everything needed for a resource that is loaded into the Brent resource manager.
scale: Scale is one of the opinionated patterns aiming to increase or decrease the amount of deployed resources of a specific type.
service chain: Instantiated as relationships in assembly descriptors.
TOSCA: Topology and orchestration specification for cloud applications (TOSCA) is a standard defined by OASIS.
topology (or instance inventory): The repository storing key state information related to assembly and resource instances and topology of the deployment locations.
virtual infrastructure manager: The entity controlling the cloud infrastructure compute, storage and network resources.; For example, OpenStack.
virtual network functions (VNF): Virtual network functions (VNF) allow a much simpler set of lifecycle tasks enabling near full automation of the creation and healing of virtual services, far more than is possible with their physical counterparts.; Also see network function virtualization.