Cyber Infrastructure Glossary

• Cyber Infrastructure (CI): The collection of interconnected computing systems, networked devices, software, and data that enable the exchange, processing, storage, and analysis of digital information.
• Virtual machine (VM): A computer system that is connected to remotely from a local computer
• Cluster: A collection of virtual machines, usually consisting of a main VM and several worker VM
• Node: Any virtual machine inside of a cluster
• Main node: Node used for orchestrating and balancing the load on a cluster. The main node can be responsible for assigning users to each worker node.
• Worker node: Node used for running the main application and report to the main node
• CPU: Central processing unit. Executes instructions of the computer programs. Most modern computers have several of these, which enables programs to run in parallel
• GPU: Graphics processing unit. Like a CPU but specialized at the hardware level for rendering graphics. Also, very good at training and running machine learning models
• Disk drive: Hardware which stores the data on a computer.
• Disk space: The maximum amount of data that can be added and stored by a disk drive
• Volume: A virtual disk drive that is added to a virtual machine to increase its storage. Can usually be detached and reattached, so that virtual machine can be shut down and restarted.
• Memory: The amount of the data that a computer can load at one time for use by its programs. This is usually much less than the computer’s disk space. You may be able to store a 50GB data file on your computer, but if your computer’s memory is only 16GB you cannot load the file to be used by a program