homelab-design/GLOSSARY.md

📖 Glossary

Terminology and abbreviations used in the DaviesTechLabs homelab

A

ADR (Architecture Decision Record)

A document that captures an important architectural decision, including context, decision, and consequences.

Argo Events

Event-driven automation for Kubernetes that triggers workflows based on events from various sources.

Argo Workflows

A container-native workflow engine for orchestrating parallel jobs on Kubernetes.

Authentik

Self-hosted identity provider supporting SAML, OIDC, and other protocols.

B

BGE (BAAI General Embedding)

A family of embedding models from BAAI used for semantic search and RAG.

Bounded Context

A DDD concept defining a boundary within which a particular domain model applies.

C

C4 Model

A hierarchical approach to software architecture diagrams: Context, Container, Component, Code.

Cilium

eBPF-based networking, security, and observability for Kubernetes.

CloudNative-PG

Kubernetes operator for PostgreSQL databases.

CNI (Container Network Interface)

Standard for configuring network interfaces in Linux containers.

D

DDD (Domain-Driven Design)

Software design approach focusing on the core domain and domain logic.

E

Embedding

A vector representation of text, used for semantic similarity and search.

Envoy Gateway

Kubernetes Gateway API implementation using Envoy proxy.

External Secrets Operator (ESO)

Kubernetes operator that syncs secrets from external stores (Vault, etc.).

F

Falco

Runtime security tool that detects anomalous activity in containers.

Flux CD

GitOps toolkit for Kubernetes, continuously reconciling cluster state with Git.

G

GitOps

Operational practice using Git as the single source of truth for declarative infrastructure.

GPU Device Plugin

Kubernetes plugin that exposes GPU resources to containers.

H

HelmRelease

Flux CRD for managing Helm chart releases declaratively.

HTTPRoute

Kubernetes Gateway API resource for HTTP routing rules.

I

InferenceService

KServe CRD for deploying ML models with autoscaling and traffic management.

J

JetStream

NATS persistence layer providing streaming, key-value, and object stores.

K

KServe

Kubernetes-native platform for deploying and serving ML models.

Kubeflow

ML toolkit for Kubernetes, including pipelines, training operators, and more.

Kustomization

Flux CRD for applying Kustomize overlays from Git sources.

L

LLM (Large Language Model)

AI model trained on vast text data, capable of generating human-like text.

Longhorn

Cloud-native distributed storage for Kubernetes.

M

MessagePack (msgpack)

Binary serialization format, more compact than JSON.

Milvus

Open-source vector database for similarity search and AI applications.

MLflow

Platform for managing the ML lifecycle: experiments, models, deployment.

MinIO

S3-compatible object storage.

N

NATS

Cloud-native messaging system for microservices, IoT, and serverless.

Node Feature Discovery (NFD)

Kubernetes add-on for detecting hardware features on nodes.

P

Pipeline

In ML context, a DAG of components that process data and train/serve models.

Premium User

User tier with enhanced features (more RAG docs, priority routing).

R

RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)

AI technique combining document retrieval with LLM generation for grounded responses.

Reranker

Model that rescores retrieved documents based on relevance to a query.

ROCm

AMD's open-source GPU computing platform (alternative to CUDA).

S

Schematic

Talos Linux concept for defining system extensions and configurations.

SOPS (Secrets OPerationS)

Tool for encrypting secrets in Git repositories.

STT (Speech-to-Text)

Converting spoken audio to text (e.g., Whisper).

Strix Halo

AMD's unified memory architecture for APUs with large GPU memory.

T

Talos Linux

Minimal, immutable Linux distribution designed specifically for Kubernetes.

TTS (Text-to-Speech)

Converting text to spoken audio (e.g., XTTS/Coqui).

V

Valkey

Redis-compatible in-memory data store (Redis fork).

vLLM

High-throughput LLM serving engine with PagedAttention.

VIP (Virtual IP)

IP address shared among multiple hosts for high availability.

Volcano

Kubernetes batch scheduler for high-performance workloads (ML, HPC).

VRM

File format for 3D humanoid avatars.

W

Whisper

OpenAI's speech recognition model.

X

XTTS

Coqui's multi-language text-to-speech model with voice cloning.

---

Acronyms Quick Reference

Acronym	Full Form
ADR	Architecture Decision Record
API	Application Programming Interface
BGE	BAAI General Embedding
CI/CD	Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment
CRD	Custom Resource Definition
DAG	Directed Acyclic Graph
DDD	Domain-Driven Design
ESO	External Secrets Operator
GPU	Graphics Processing Unit
HA	High Availability
HPA	Horizontal Pod Autoscaler
LLM	Large Language Model
ML	Machine Learning
NATS	(not an acronym, named after message passing in Erlang)
NFD	Node Feature Discovery
OIDC	OpenID Connect
RAG	Retrieval-Augmented Generation
RBAC	Role-Based Access Control
ROCm	Radeon Open Compute
S3	Simple Storage Service
SAML	Security Assertion Markup Language
SOPS	Secrets OPerationS
SSO	Single Sign-On
STT	Speech-to-Text
TLS	Transport Layer Security
TTS	Text-to-Speech
UUID	Universally Unique Identifier
VIP	Virtual IP
VRAM	Video Random Access Memory

---

Related Documents

• ARCHITECTURE.md - System overview
• TECH-STACK.md - Technology details
• DOMAIN-MODEL.md - Entity definitions