KubeAcademy by VMware
Cloud Native Lingo
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In this lesson, we take a light hearted approach to one of the most difficult parts of learning Cloud Native and Kubernetes—the lingo!

Jonathan Smith

Director in VMware’s Cloud Native Field Engineering and Education

Hi everyone! I am a Director in VMware’s Cloud Native Field Engineering and Education organization. My team works with customers to both teach Kubernetes and Cloud Native concepts as well as help implement solutions in this fast-changing space.

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Hi, everyone. This is Jonathan Smith, director of field engineering and education for cloud native applications. For those of you just starting off on your cloud native journey, not only is it difficult to learn the various technologies that are part of the cloud native ecosystem, but also learning the terms and lingo can be quite daunting. So what I thought I would do today is provide a brief introduction to some of the key cloud native lingo items that you may come across.

First, let's start with an easy one. Of course, the term cloud native is pronounced "klawd nay-tiv." However, this is, of course, not only one of the most hotly contested definitions, uh, if you ask 10 people their definition of cloud native, you'll get 10 different answers. There's also at least one alternate pronunciation that you should be aware of, and that is "klawd neye-eve."

Of course, I'm joking, uh, but the reason behind the joke and the reason why, uh, this exists is that many organizations believe that adopting cloud native technologies is sufficient to be cloud native. And of course, that's one of the, the furthest things from the truth. To truly be able to be cloud native, you have to make significant organizational changes, and that of course is the most difficult part of any journey.

I won't elaborate too much on that today, but be prepared as you, uh, go through this process, to invest not only, uh, the time and energy into the technologies but also the human elements of the organization so that you can truly, uh, be successful with cloud native adoption.

Let's start off with our most popular cloud native orchestration tool or container orchestration tool, and is, of course, pronounced "koo-ber-net-eez." Now, many people, uh, you can ex- you can, uh, emphasize the first part of the word as either "koo" in koo- as in "koo-ber-net-eez," or "koob" as in "koob-er-net-eez." Either way, you get to Kubernetes, so both are equally correct.

Uh, but do, uh, take note that many people shorten the word Kubernetes to just "koob." So, uh, an easy shorthand is "koob."

The word Kubernetes comes from the Greek expression, uh, uh, or the Greek word, uh, that can be pronounced as "key-ver-neet-eez." Uh, I'm not a native Greek speaker. Uh, so, uh, certainly I may have completely butchered that pronunciation. But the definition, uh, of Kubernetes in Greek is for, is helmsman or captain, which of course, fits in with the nautical theme, uh, around Docker and containers and Kubernetes in general.

Uh, but again, nobody pronounces it that way, uh, at least not in the Kubernetes community. Uh, and the founders of Kubernetes pronounce it as "koo-ber-net-eez," so just be aware, uh, uh, uh, of the definition and the origin, uh, but probably stick with the pronunciation "koo-ber-net-eez."

I've also heard the pronunciation "koo-burn-eteez," uh, instead of Kubernetes. Uh, again, this is one of those things where it may or may not be definitively wrong, uh, but when you talk about lingo and terminology, uh, you know, being an outlier, uh, or, uh, unique, uh, is often equivalent to being wrong, so stick with "koo-ber-net-eez."

Now, one other pronunciation that I have heard is "koo-ber-nets." Uh, this one I'll just go ahead and say is definitively wrong. You'll probably be pegged as a, you know, a, uh, an, uh, older generation or, uh, someone that's not with the times at least. So, uh, just be aware that, uh, "koo-ber-nets" is, uh, not a very, uh, uh, uh, not an expression that you want to use. So again, "koo-ber-net-eez" is, uh, is going to be, uh, uh, your answer there.

Now, there's one expression or one pronunciation that, uh, uh, that I've heard that of course is, uh, um, you know, a little bit, uh, different, uh, by our own Duffie Cooley, and that's "koo-ber-neet-eez." Now, um, I can honestly say I don't think I've heard anybody other than Duffie really pronounce it commonly this way.

Uh, but Duffie is, of course, a, a staff Kubernetes architect. He's one, uh, of the most, uh, plugged in meners- members of the Kubernetes community. Uh, if you follow him on Twitter or you look him up on the Kubernetes Slack channel, uh, you know, he's, uh, he's pretty plugged in, and he's an expert on, uh, many, uh, parts of the cloud native and Kubernetes ecosystem. So he can p- pretty much pronounce it, uh, any way he wants.

And there's a funny expression that we often have on the team, and that's, uh, Duffie is usually right. So again, if you want to be a Duffie acolyte, feel free to pronounce it "koo-ber-neet-eez."

Let's get into a couple of shorthand expressions. So not only is it important to know how to pronounce it, uh, but understand some of the, uh, the various different ways in which, uh, you can express, uh, the same thing in a shorthand form. So, uh, if we look at the, the shortest, uh, way to pronounce the word Kubernetes, of course, uh, I've already mentioned there's, uh, the w- the, the expression "koob." So quite common, and I'm sure you'll hear it quite a bit.

Uh, if you look at the word Kubernetes, however, you recognize that not only is it 10 characters l- long, uh, it's a very long word, so not only is it difficult to pronounce, it's a very long word. Uh, you have a couple of options here. So, uh, if you remove the middle eight characters of the word Kubernetes, you take that eight, and you plop it right down in the middle of the K and the S, and you have a nice expression that you can pronounce as "keights."

Um, of course, many people do also spell it out completely and say, "K8S." Uh, but K8S or "keights" are, are equally valid. I tend to stick with, uh, "keights," just because it's faster.

Now, let's look at some of the components that make up Kubernetes, and let's learn how to pronounce those as well. So if we look at the master, uh, uh, uh, node. In, in this case, I'm hiding all the, the elements that we don't want to talk about today.

Uh, there's the command line tool, which is how you interact with Kubernetes. There's the key value data store, which stores all the data, uh, that makes it possible for Kubernetes, uh, to, to actually operate. And then on the worker node, we have, uh, uh, a management layer that's responsible for communicating back with the Kubernetes master and also making sure that each of the, the workloads get placed and, and managed properly.

So again, I won't go into any details, but I do want to tell you how to pronounce these terms or these, uh, components. So the first one we'll talk about is the key value data store for Kubernetes, and it's pronounced "etsy-d." So E-T-C-D is pronounced "etsy-d." Pretty easy.

Now, uh, this, uh, is an interesting one. You have actually two options. So the kubelet, you can pronounce as "koob-let" or "cube-let." You have two options, so pick the first part of the, the word, how you want to pronounce it, and you have, again, "koob-let" and "cube-let." Either are equally correct.

And when we talk about the command line tool, which is how you interact with Kubernetes, um, most commonly, of course, you not only have the option of "koob" and "cube," but also the last part of the word you can pronounce as "cuttle," "C-T-L," or "control," which gives you "koob cuttle," "koob C-T-L," "koob control," or "cube cuttle," "cube C-T-L," or "cube control."

All of those are equally valid, so you really just need to pick whether you want to say "koob," and then you can pronounce any of, uh, the, the last part of the word any of these ways, or "cube," and you can pronounce, again, uh, however you pick. You can mix and match until you, uh, 'til you find the right expression that really works for you.

However, just be aware, a- although you can say "koob-let" as "cube-let," and you can pronounce "koob cuttle" as "cube control," uh, it doesn't mean that it's, uh, acceptable to say, uh, "cube" for "cube-er-net-eez." Uh, I'm sure some people do it, but, uh, it's pretty uncommon. And of course, even the founders of Kubernetes pronounce it as "koo-ber-net-eez." So again, uh, you probably want to stick with, uh, sort of the safe expression, uh, unless you're a Duffie acolyte.

Now, me personally, I pronounce Kubernetes as, of course, "koo-ber-net-eez." Uh, in terms of, uh, kubelet, uh, I stick with "koob-let." And K8S, that expression, I pronounce as "keights." And, uh, the only thing I do slightly different is I'm from the South, and in the South, you tend to uh, e- enunciate your Ts as Ds, so I tend to say "koob cuddle."

So you learned a little bit more, hopefully, today, about some ways in which you can pronounce and express some of the terms in the cloud native ecosystem. Uh, feel free to leave us some, uh, feedback, and we'd love to learn how you pronounce those same words. Thank you, and, uh, look forward to, uh, more video sessions. Thanks.

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