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Terminology

Web Portal (Portal)
This is the aggregated view and entry point for the user. It provides the mechanisms for the multi-tenant, multi-service-provider self-service portal.
Control Plane (CP)
This runs Crossplane and the AppCat Control Plane (Kubernetes API) which manages all the service instances on worker clusters. Each zone of a Service Provider runs at least one CP.
Worker Cluster
Clusters running the actual workload, managed by the Control Plane. Each zone of a CSP runs at least one Worker Cluster. Services are directly exposed to the end-user.
Service
A generic service like "PostgreSQL" or "Keycloak". This doesn't include pricing or any other aspect of a managed service.
Crossplane specific terms
  • Compositions: A template to define how to create resources.
  • Composite Resource Definition (XRD): A custom API specification.
  • Composite Resource (XR): Created by using the custom API defined in a Composite Resource Definition. XRs use the Composition template to create new managed resources.
  • Claims (XRC): Like a Composite Resource, but with namespace scoping.
  • Managed Resource (MR): Represents an external service in a Provider.
  • Providers enable Crossplane to provision infrastructure on an external service. Providers create new Kubernetes APIs and map them to external APIs.