# Terms and definitions

## YaK terminology

While working with the YaK, you will mainly come across the following terms, for which you will find a definition hereafter:

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<summary>Artifacts</summary>

Artifacts are all non-OS binaries and software elements required to deploy YaK Components.\
They are stored in a repository whose location can be configured in the YaK.

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<summary>Artifact Providers</summary>

An artifact provider is a repository that contains all the [artifacts](#artifacts) required to deploy components.\
In its current version, YaK supports **AWS S3 bucket**, **Azure Blob Storage**, and **OCI Object Storage** as artifact providers.\
\
See the [artifact providers configuration page](../configuration/manage-artifact-providers) for more details.

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<summary>Components</summary>

Components are elements such as, but not limited to: databases, application servers, web servers, applications and so on.\
They are installed on a server and deployed using the YaK.

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<summary>Component types</summary>

Software packages (archives) delivered as part of the YaK components subscriptions in order to deploy components in a simple, fast and standardized manner.\
Component types require a subscription to dbi services.

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<summary>Infrastructure</summary>

Defines an on-premises or Cloud environment (i.e.: AWS account, Azure subscription, OCI account...), to which servers are deployed.

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<summary>Provider disks</summary>

Disk types and settings provided by each cloud provider and available to the YaK.\
\
:warning: Operating costs and performance can vary considerably from one type of disk to another and from one cloud provider to another, based on its characteristics. Refer to your provider's documentation to determine the disks that best meet your needs and budget.

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<summary>Provider images</summary>

Operating systems (Linux and Microsoft Windows distributions) provided by each cloud provider and available to the YaK for installation on your infrastructures.

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<summary>Provider shapes</summary>

Provider shapes are instance types at provider end that the YaK can deploy. They are defined by your cloud service providers and offer a wide variety of combinations depending on customer requirements (performance, availability, cost, etc.) and server capacity (CPU, memory, storage and networking).\
\
YaK comes with a subset of provider shapes by default. Users can add more shapes and make them available to the YaK.

:warning: - Operating costs and performance can vary considerably from one shape to another and from one cloud provider to another. Make sure you carefully select the shapes that best meet your needs and budget.

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<summary>Secrets</summary>

Secrets are a set of credentials used to connect to servers or to cloud provider accounts.\
The format of the secrets depends on the type of cloud account or server you connect to.\
Server-based secrets can be defined per server or shared between servers within the same infrastructure.\
For instance, all Linux servers of a given infrastructure may share the same secret.

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<summary>Servers</summary>

Servers are Linux or Windows machines (aka instances) that you may deploy to your infrastructures.

_Please note that only server deployment to cloud providers is supported at the moment, on-premises server deployment is not yet supported in this current release (YaK-2.0.0)._\
\&#xNAN;_On-premises servers must be available and declared into the YaK inventory prior to deploying components._

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<summary>Templates</summary>

Set of parameters and/or variables available to configure components.\
Default templates are provided as part of the YaK and users can create/manage further templates for customization.

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