Practice cloud and infrastructure abbreviations: VPC, IAM, CDN, CIDR, NAT, TLS, mTLS, JWT, OAuth, OIDC, SAML, SSO, and managed Kubernetes service acronyms.
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GKE, AKS, and EKS are all managed Kubernetes services. Which clouds do they belong to?
GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine) is Google Cloud's managed Kubernetes. AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service) is Microsoft Azure's offering. EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) is AWS's. All three manage the Kubernetes control plane so you only manage worker nodes.
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What does IAM stand for and what is its function in cloud platforms?
IAM (Identity and Access Management) is the system that controls authentication and authorization in cloud platforms. IAM policies define which users, roles, or services can perform which actions on which resources.
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What is the difference between TLS and mTLS?
Standard TLS lets the client verify the server's identity (via certificate). mTLS (mutual TLS) requires both sides to present certificates — the server also verifies the client. mTLS is widely used in zero-trust service mesh architectures (e.g., Istio).
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What does CIDR stand for and what does a notation like '10.0.0.0/16' mean?
CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing) notation describes IP address ranges. '10.0.0.0/16' means the first 16 bits are fixed (10.0.x.x), giving 65,536 addresses. VPC and subnet sizes are always expressed in CIDR notation.
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What is the difference between OAuth 2.0 and OIDC?
OAuth 2.0 handles authorization — delegating access to resources without sharing passwords. OIDC (OpenID Connect) is a thin identity layer on top of OAuth 2.0 that adds authentication — an ID token that tells you who the user is. Most SSO implementations use OIDC.