Glossary¶
This reference article is a glossary. It is meant to provide a general overview of terms common to CrateDB Cloud. Because it forms a counterpart to the Glossary for CrateDB, we mainly cover terms here that are specific or primary to CrateDB Cloud; terms particular to the whole CrateDB architecture will appear in the CrateDB glossary instead. We hope this glossary will help you understand the basic meaning of concepts in the CrateDB Console, documentation, the Croud CLI, and other CrateDB Cloud-related sources. It is not meant to be a general guide to IT or IIoT terminology.
In entries, terms used that have entries of their own are cross-referenced through links. The entries are presented in alphabetical order.
Table of contents
Audit log¶
The Audit Log registers and displays all operations associated with a
particular organization. This includes operations on users, on clusters, and on consumers. The Audit Log can be found in the rightmost tab of the Organization overview page in the CrateDB Cloud Console. Only an organization admin has access to the Audit Log.
Azure AD¶
Azure AD (Active Directory) is Microsoft’s authentication and sign-in service for accessing Microsoft hosted services. CrateDB Cloud uses AzureAD as one of the means of sign-up and authentication for its service. For documentation on Azure AD, refer to the Microsoft documentation on Azure.
See also
Cluster¶
Within each organization, an administrator can deploy any number of products. The main service is the deployment of clusters, which can be done through the CrateDB Cloud Console. A cluster is a set of at least one instance (referred to as node) which forms a database. It is also possible (and recommended) to deploy multi-node clusters. Then the the database is truly distributed. Depending on the user’s subscription plan and scaling, each cluster will have a certain storage capacity and can process a certain amount of ingests and queries per second. Only actual cluster usage is billed.
A cluster has a name, a unique ID, as well as a storage and processing capacity and a number of nodes. Note that clusters are also versioned. For information on how to deploy a cluster, please see our tutorial for deploying a CrateDB Cloud cluster from scratch.
See also
Console¶
The CrateDB Cloud Console is the hosted user interface for CrateDB Cloud. It is a fully supported, easy-to-use UI which allows customers to interact with every aspect of the CrateDB Cloud service (subject to user role permissions.) While CrateDB Cloud also supports a CLI for interacting with the service, we assume use of the Console by default. Only the Console allows deployment of a cluster.
For information on how to use specific elements of the Console, refer to our Console overview.
See also
Consumer¶
A consumer in the sense used for CrateDB Cloud architecture and documentation is an entity that reads event data from an IoT hub. It is possible to use a consumer, such as Azure IoT Hub, with CrateDB Cloud: you can store the data processed by the consumer on the Cloud cluster. For a tutorial on how to do this, see this article on our blog. Operations on consumers are registered in the Audit Log.
Croud¶
Croud is the name of the CrateDB Cloud Command-Line Interface (CLI). You can use Croud to interact with the organization and products you have access to. Croud is intended for customers who prefer a CLI to the use of a hosted web interface such as the CrateDB Cloud Console. Note however that the Console is the default way to interact with CrateDB Cloud, and currently clusters can only be deployed within the Console. The documentation for Croud can be found under Croud CLI.
See also
Edge¶
CrateDB Edge is a hybrid cloud database solution presented by Crate.io. It allows customers to deploy a Kubernetes cluster either on their own cloud provider or their own local servers, using the database software and maintenance support that CrateDB Cloud offers. It can be accessed through the CrateDB Cloud Console.
Currently, CrateDB Edge is available as a public beta.
Endpoint¶
An endpoint is the end or goal of a communication channel. A user or client communicates with an endpoint via a defined method, which returns a defined set of data. In CrateDB Cloud, different profiles can be used to configure their own associated endpoints, which a user connects to via the Croud CLI. For information on how to do this, see the Croud documentation.
See also
Offer¶
An offer or subscription offer is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product prepared for consumer purchase on a subscription basis. CrateDB Cloud has an offer on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace and on the AWS Marketplace.
See also
Organization¶
Organizations represent the larger structure - for example a company - within which CrateDB Cloud products are deployed. At the organization level there is always at least one organization administrator, who can in turn add organization members. Such organization admins and members have access to the clusters run by the organization. One account can be a member or admin of multiple organizations. (For more on user roles in CrateDB Cloud and how to manage them, see our reference for user roles.)
Each organization has a name, a unique ID, and optionally an associated email address. For information on how to create an organization, please refer to our guide to creating a new organization.
Product¶
A product in the sense used in CrateDB Cloud is something that uses the Cloud service for the storage of data. It consists of either a consumer or a cluster and is run within an organization.
Profile¶
In CrateDB Cloud’s CLI, Croud, profiles are sets of configuration options. They define API endpoints and the desired output format of interaction with those endpoints. A Croud user can create multiple profiles and switch between them as desired.
See also
Region¶
A region in the sense used for CrateDB Cloud is a set of data centers (servers) grouped together on a geographic basis so as to not exceed a certain latency. CrateDB Edge also permits the creation of custom regions. These regions are designed to correspond to servers used by CrateDB Edge customers locally, on which they can deploy CrateDB Cloud clusters for use in plants and other production facilities.
SaaS¶
SaaS stands for “Software-as-a-Service”. It refers to a model where software is provided to customers on a subscription basis, rather than a one-off payment, and is centrally hosted. Besides the default option of subscribing directly, CrateDB Cloud can be used as a service through its SaaS offer on Microsoft Azure Marketplace and the AWS Marketplace.
Scale unit¶
The CrateDB Cloud subscription plans each come with a number of different scale units. Each scale unit represents an (additional) unit multiplying the specific combination of hardware capacity that applies to that plan.
Subscription¶
A subscription is - for the purposes of CrateDB Cloud - a container in which the CrateDB Cloud service is created and managed. You can purchase a CrateDB Cloud subscription by following the steps in our tutorial. In the case of our SaaS offers on the cloud provider marketplaces, customers subscribe to CrateDB Cloud through that particular cloud provider.
The billing for a particular instance of the CrateDB Cloud service is managed per subscription. On Microsoft Azure, a given customer can have multiple subscriptions. This can be practical in case that customer wants to separate different instances of using the CrateDB Cloud service into different billing accounts.
Subscription plan¶
CrateDB Cloud’s service comes with several possible subscription plans. These plans are combinations of hardware specifications that are geared towards particular customer use cases: from trial and development plans to high-end production clusters. They can also be further adjusted for different scale units per plan. Currently there are four subscription plans available for direct deployment, as well as four plans and a separate contract option via our Marketplace offers. For more information, refer to our documentation on subscription plans.
System user¶
In CrateDB Cloud, there are two distinct system users:
One is the “SYSTEM” user in the Audit Log. This is an internal user that logs the results of (attempted) scaling operations.
The other is the “system” user in the CrateDB backend. For more information on this second user, refer to our explanation in the CrateDB Cloud reference.
See also
Tier¶
In the CrateDB Cloud subscription plans for SaaS Marketplace subscriptions, tiers offer different magnitudes of the hardware composition of a given plan. For a given ratio of storage capacity, memory, and CPUs, going up in tier allows you to multiply the hardware values for your cluster deployment without changing the hardware ratio.
User¶
A user in CrateDB Cloud is any individual account authorized to interact with some part of an organization’s assets. Each user has a defined role within the organization (see our reference on user roles) and is associated with a specific email address.
See also
Versions¶
CrateDB uses a semantic versioning system called Semver with three levels of versioning: major versions, minor versions, and patch versions. (Versions can also be referred to as releases.) CrateDB clusters run on the CrateDB Cloud service also refer to this CrateDB versioning system.
A major version of CrateDB is a release that includes significant changes in features, performance, and/or supported operations that are not backwards compatible with any previous version. It is indicated by the first numeral in the versioning sequence, i.e. the 4 in ‘version 4.6.7’.
A minor version of CrateDB is a release that includes substantial changes in features, performance, and/or supported operations compared to the previous such version. It is indicated by the second numeral in the versioning sequence, e.g. the 6 in ‘version 4.6.7’.
A patch version of CrateDB is a release that includes bug fixes and smaller quality of life improvements compared to the previous such version. It is indicated by the third numeral in the versioning sequence, e.g. the 7 in ‘version 4.6.7’. All available upgrades are visible in the Manage Tab of the cluster detailed view.
See also