What is a distributed application architecture?
In this section, we are going to explain in detail what we mean when we talk about a distributed application architecture. First, we need to make sure that all words or acronyms we use have a meaning and that we are all talking the same language.
Defining the terminology
In this and the subsequent chapters, we will talk a lot about concepts that might not be familiar to everyone. To make sure we all talk the same language, let's briefly introduce and describe the most important of these concepts or words:
VM | Acronym for virtual machine. This is a virtual computer. |
Node | Individual server used to run applications. This can be a physical server, often called bare metal, or a VM. A node can be a mainframe, supercomputer, standard business server, or even a Raspberry Pi. Nodes can be computers in a company's own data center or in the cloud. Normally, a node is part of a cluster. |
Cluster | Group of nodes connected by a network used to run distributed applications... |
