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Software Engineering vocabulary · Release and Maintenance

Cluster

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈklʌstər/nounCore term

In software engineering, cluster means: A group of connected machines that work together as one system, for example to run containers in Kubernetes or to store data in a database.

In Turkish: küme, cluster

How it is used

Most often heard as 'Kubernetes cluster', but also 'database cluster' and 'Elasticsearch cluster'. You create, upgrade, scale and delete clusters. Teams often keep separate clusters for staging and production.

Example sentences

  1. We're upgrading the production cluster this weekend, so expect a few pod restarts.

  2. The cluster has six nodes spread across three availability zones.

Common collocations

  • Kubernetes cluster
  • create a cluster
  • upgrade the cluster
  • cluster autoscaler
  • database cluster
  • nodeOne machine, physical or virtual, that is part of a cluster. In Kubernetes, worker nodes are the machines where pods actually run.
  • KubernetesAn open-source system that runs and manages containers across many machines: it starts them, restarts failed ones, spreads traffic and scales them up or down.
  • podThe smallest unit that Kubernetes runs: one or more containers that are always placed together on the same node and share a network address and storage.
  • orchestrationThe automatic management of many containers or services: deciding where they run, starting and restarting them, connecting them and scaling them.
  • high availabilityDesigning a database system so that it keeps working with very little downtime, even if a server, disk or data center fails.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Release and Maintenance

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