Concepts and Terminology

Summary

This page provides high level information around some of the core technologies and concepts that we use, work with, and build at Konstruct.

This page is provided as a reference for folks who want to learn more about Kubernetes, Konstruct, Kubefirst (including the UI/ Kubefirst Pro), and some of the other tools that are common when working with Kubernetes.

If you don’t see something here that you expected or you think is valuable. we want to hear from you - reach out to us through our community Slack.

Helpful External Resources

• The Illustrated Children's Guide to Kubernetes - A fun, web-based resource that walks through Kubernetes basics.

• Kubernetes Glossary - A comprehensive list of Kubernetes terminology (containers, clusters, nodes, etc.)

• Kubernetes for the Absolute Beginner - A hands-on web course with videos, modules, tutorials, etc.

• Kubernetes in Action (Book/E-book) - An e-book focused on running applications with Kubernetes.

• Validkube - A tool to help put Kubernetes to use and learn more about why your deployment is failing.

Konstruct Products

Kubefirst

Kubefirst is our free, open source cloud-native platform. It includes GitOps cloud management and application delivery with automated Terraform workflows, Vault secrets management, GitHub or GitLab integrations with Argo and more. Kubefirst Pro (the UI) is our incredible user experience and interface to manage your clusters, platform, and applications. With our GitOps catalog you can quickly add tools to your clusters or fleets with the push of a button. Model clusters with consistency, manage isolation without the cost through vClusters, and get started for free.

Colony

Colony is our bare metal provisioning and data infrastructure management system. It’s a cloud-native way to auto-discover assets in your data center. Manage OS and Kubernetes cluster provisioning operations with native support for Tinkerbell automation.

Metaphor

Kontruct’s metaphor application is an example application with source code, builds, and GitOps delivery to showcase various features, integrations, and best practices for Kubefirst the platform.

Technology We Use

Technology	Summary
Akamai	A massively distributed edge and cloud platform — makes it easy for businesses to develop and run applications and workloads, while we put experiences closer to users and keep threats farther away.
Argo	Open source tools for Kubernetes to run workflows, manage clusters, and do GitOps including Argo CD and Argo Workflows.
Atlantis	Atlantis is a tool for collaborating on Terraform that enables developers and operators to run terraform plan and apply directly from Terraform pull requests. Atlantis then comments back on the pull request with the output of the commands.
ChartMuseum	ChartMuseum is an open-source Helm Chart Repository server written in Go (Golang), with support for cloud storage backends.
Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)	The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) is part of the Linux foundation that hosts critical components of the global technology infrastructure and brings together the world’s top developers, end users, and vendors at their open source developer conferences.
Civo	A cloud-native service provider that runs state-of-the-art cloud computing hardware in data centers around the world.
Docker	At the highest level, Docker refers to the Docker project as a whole, which is a platform for developers and sysadmins to develop, ship, and run applications. They have a great glossary, where you can learn more about their terminology.
GitHub	A cloud-based platform to store, share, and work together with others to write code.
GitLab	An open source code repository and collaborative development platform for large DevOps and DevSecOps projects.
GitOps	GitOps is an operational framework that uses DevOps best practices to automate infrastructure provisioning.
HashiCorp Vault	Vault is an identity-based secret and encryption management system.
Helm	Helm automates the creation, packaging, configuration, and deployment of Kubernetes applications — Helm Charts help you define, install, and upgrade even the most complex Kubernetes application.
Homebrew	Homebrew is a package manager for macOS that installs packages to help users install, manage, and update software on macOS, Linux and WSL. Checkout the man page here.
K3s	K3s is a highly available, certified Kubernetes distribution designed for production workloads in unattended, resource-constrained, remote locations or inside IoT appliances.
MinIO	MinIO built an Enterprise Object Store as a cloud-native solution for large scale AI/ML that focuses on performance, security, scale, and manageability.
Terraform	Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool that lets you build, change, and version infrastructure safely and efficiently. This includes low-level components like compute instances, storage, and networking; and high-level components like DNS entries and SaaS features.
Tinkerbell	Tinkerbell is a bare metal provisioning engine, built and maintained by the Tinkerbell Community. The core Tinkerbell stack is comprised of the following services: Smee, Hegel, Hook, and Tink.
Traefik Ingress Controller	The Traefik Ingress controller is a Kubernetes Ingress controller; that is to say, it manages access to cluster services by supporting the Ingress specification.
Ubuntu	Ubuntu is an open source operating system made by Canonical based on Linux. It can be run locally or on a virtual machine in Desktop, Server, and Core editions.
Vultr	Vultr is a global automated cloud infrastructure provider that offers services like cloud servers, storage, and networking.