Skip to content

Glossary

Documentation Icons

Icon Description
✏ Note — A point of emphasis or caution.
💡 Tip — A helpful suggestion or a reference to additional material not covered in this document.
⚠ Warning — A suggestion or advisory intended to avoid a loss of service or data.

Definitions

Term Description
artifact A file of any kind produced during a container build process or associated with the operation of a container. For example, a Helm chart is an artifact that might be stored along with a container.
CNCF As part of the Linux Foundation, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation provides support, oversight, and direction for open-source, cloud native projects.
cosign cosign is a tool that performs container signing, verification, and storage in an OCI registry.
cosigned cosigned is an image admission controller that validates container images before deploying them.
cri-o cri-o is an implementation of the Kubernetes Container Runtime Interface (CRI) to enable using OCI compatible runtimes. It is a lightweight alternative to using Docker as the runtime for Kubernetes.
deduplication A storage space saving feature wherein only a single copy of specific content is maintained on disk while many different image manifests may hold references to that same content.
digest A hashed checksum, such as SHA-256, for verifying the integrity of the downloaded image.
Distribution Specification The OCI Distribution Specification project defines an API protocol to facilitate and standardize the distribution of content.
extensions Additional registry features (APIs) that are not a part of the Distribution Specification can be added as Extensions.
helm chart A helm chart is a package of files that orchestrate the deployment of Kubernetes resources into a Kubernetes cluster.
manifest An image manifest provides a configuration and set of layers for a single container image for a specific architecture and operating system.
node exporter A software component that collects hardware and operating system level metrics exposed by the kernel.
OCI The Open Container Initiative (OCI) is an open governance structure for the express purpose of creating open industry standards around container formats and runtimes.
ORAS OCI Registry as Storage (ORAS) is a tool for distributing OCI artifacts across OCI registries.
prometheus Prometheus is a node exporter that exposes a wide variety of hardware- and kernel-related metrics.
registry A service that stores and distributes container images and artifacts.
repository A collection of images with the same name, differentiated by tags.
skopeo skopeo is a command line utility that performs various operations on container images and image repositories.
stacker stacker is a standalone tool for building OCI images via a declarative yaml format. The output of the build process is a container image in an OCI layout.
tag A label applied to an image that distinguishes the image from other images in the same repository. A common example is a version tag.
zb A benchmarking tool, available as a zot companion binary, for benchmarking a zot registry or any other container image registry that conforms to the OCI Distribution Specification.
zli A zot companion binary that implements a set of command line commands for interacting with the zot registry server.
zui A zot companion binary that implements a graphical user interface (GUI) for interacting with the zot registry server.
zxp A node exporter, available as a zot companion binary, that can be deployed with a minimal zot image in order to scrape metrics from the zot server.

Last update: March 14, 2023