Compute
Virtual machines, containers, and serverless execution.
21 terms
Compute is the layer where you choose how much control you want over the machine your code runs on, in exchange for how much operational work you take on. A VM gives you a full OS and everything that comes with patching one. A container gives you process isolation and a portable image without a full OS per workload. Serverless gives up the machine entirely — you ship a function and the platform handles provisioning, at the cost of cold starts and execution-time limits.
Most real architectures mix all three rather than picking one: a Kubernetes cluster of VMs running containers, with a few genuinely bursty or infrequent workloads pulled out into Lambda or Cloud Functions. The entries here cover the mechanics of each layer and — for containers specifically — the orchestration problem (Kubernetes) that shows up once you have more than a handful of them.
- Amazon EKS
Amazon's managed Kubernetes — AWS runs the control plane, you run (or don't) the nodes. Power and portability at the cost of Kubernetes's full operational weight.
- Auto Scaling
Automatically adjusting capacity to match demand — the cloud's core elasticity promise, and a discipline of choosing the right metric, limits, and reaction speed.
- AWS App Runner
AWS's fully-managed container-to-URL service — push an image or repo, get a scaling HTTPS endpoint, skip the orchestration entirely.
- AWS EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
AWS's foundational virtual servers — the instance-type catalog, pricing models, and the rent-vs-commit math that underpins most AWS bills.
- AWS Elastic Beanstalk
AWS's original PaaS — deploy code and it provisions the EC2, load balancers, and scaling underneath, with the resources left visible for when you outgrow the abstraction.
- AWS Fargate
AWS's serverless container runtime — run containers on ECS or EKS without managing the underlying servers, trading per-node control for zero cluster ops.
- AWS Lambda
AWS's function-as-a-service — code that runs on demand in Firecracker microVMs, scales to zero, and bills per millisecond. The reference implementation of serverless.
- Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Azure's managed Kubernetes — a free control plane and deep Entra ID integration, the natural K8s choice for Microsoft-centric enterprises.
- Azure Virtual Machines
Microsoft Azure's virtual machines — the compute core for Windows, .NET, and hybrid enterprises, with hybrid licensing as a distinctive cost lever.
- Bare Metal Server
A dedicated physical server with no hypervisor between you and the hardware — maximum performance and control, at the cost of cloud elasticity.
- Cloudflare Workers
Serverless that runs at the network edge in V8 isolates, not containers — near-zero cold starts and global-by-default, with a distinct execution model to design around.
- Cold Start
The latency penalty when a serverless function runs after being idle — the defining performance tax of [serverless](/glossary/serverless/), and the thing every FaaS optimization targets.
- Container
A lightweight, isolated package that runs an application and its dependencies.
- Google App Engine
Google's original PaaS — the pioneering 'just deploy your code' platform, now a mature elder alongside its serverless successors.
- Google Cloud Run
Google's serverless container platform — deploy any container, scale to zero, pay per use. The middle path between functions and Kubernetes.
- Google Compute Engine (GCE)
Google Cloud's virtual machines — live migration, sustained-use discounts, and per-second billing distinguish it from the EC2 model.
- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
Google's managed Kubernetes — from the company that created Kubernetes — with Autopilot mode offering the most hands-off managed-K8s experience available.
- Hypervisor
The software layer that runs virtual machines by partitioning physical hardware — the invisible foundation every cloud instance depends on.
- Microservices
An architecture style where an application is split into small, independently deployable services.
- Serverless
A cloud model where the provider runs your code on demand without you managing servers.
- Virtual Machine (VM)
A software emulation of a physical computer — the abstraction that made cloud computing possible, now sharing the stage with the lighter-weight container.