Terminology

454 terms, tools, patterns and metrics an architect is expected to use precisely. Each one gets a short explanation of what it is, and — where it matters — what it is commonly confused with. Search filters as you type; the column headers sort.

All areas454 Architecture Fundamentals16 Distributed Systems73 Data Architecture71 Cloud Architecture55 Networking13 API & Integration Architecture17 Reliability & Resilience16 Observability14 Performance & Capacity Engineering13 Security Architecture50 Cost Architecture & FinOps12 Business Architecture9 Architecture Communication8 Enterprise Architecture8 Legacy Modernization11 AI-Era Architecture15 Software Architecture & Engineering19 Architecture Patterns15 Architecture Decision-Making11 The Architect's Meta-Skills8

Kind Any concept166 practice107 pattern93 case-study26 tool26 protocol22 metric14

6 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Autoscaling	pattern	Cloud Architecture	Adding and removing capacity automatically in response to a demand signal, to track load without paying for peak all the time.
Immutable Backup Object Lock, WORM	pattern	Backup Strategies	A backup that cannot be modified or deleted for a defined retention period, even by an administrator — the control that makes backups survive ransomware and insider error.
Kubernetes Operator	pattern	Kubernetes	A custom controller that encodes operational knowledge for a specific application, reconciling a custom resource towards a desired state the same way built-in controllers do.
Pilot Light	pattern	Disaster Recovery	A disaster recovery posture where core data is continuously replicated and minimal infrastructure runs, with the rest provisioned only on failover.
Target Tracking Scaling	pattern	Autoscaling	An autoscaling policy that adds or removes capacity to hold a chosen metric near a target value, like a thermostat, rather than reacting to threshold breaches.
Warm Pool	pattern	Autoscaling	Pre-initialised instances held in a stopped or standby state so that scaling out skips boot and application warm-up.