Amazon Web Services (AWS): A collection of services provided by Amazon supplying computer resources on demand:

http://aws.amazon.com

.Net: A runtime framework written by Microsoft to allow sophisticated applications to be developed similar to Java by running them on a runtime virtual machine:

http://www.microsoft.com/net

Load Balancing: The practice of allocating TCP/IP connections in a round robin fashion to an array of web servers to ensure that HTTP requests are balanced evenly across all of the servers:

http://aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing

Virtual Private Network (VPN): A network that is private and cordoned off from general IP traffic. This is achieved by encrypting traffic before it is passed over public TCP/IP connections that are shared by other users, such as the Internet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_network

Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS): A service provided by Amazon to allow asynchronous, reliable queuing, and retrieval of messages:

http://aws.amazon.com/sqs

Simple Notification Services (SNS): A service provided by Amazon to allow event notification and alerting to multiple subscribers:

http://aws.amazon.com/sns

.ASP .Net: A version of .Net specifically designed for the implementation of websites:

http://www.asp.net

.ASP Model View Controller or (MVC): A version of .Net specifically designed for the implementation of websites that follow the model, view, controller implementation and design pattern:

http://www.asp.net/mvc

Microsoft SQL Server: An enterprise class SQL database provided by Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/sql

C# .NET: A specific version of .Net to allow the use of C#, a safe derivative of C and C++. C# was developed by Microsoft and is proprietary to Microsoft:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vcsharp/aa336706

Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS): An enterprise class web server provided by Microsoft:

http://www.iis.net

Microsoft Active Directory (AD): An enterprise class authentication and security framework provided by Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/ad-main.aspx

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): A classification used to cover all web services that provide the lowest form of service, such as virtual servers, networks, and storage:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrastructure_as_a_service#Infrastructure

Platform as a Service (PaaS): A classification used to cover services, which are more complex than IaaS such as hosted database solutions or hosted web solutions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service

Software as a Service (SaaS): A classification used to cover services, which are in effect complete applications such as Salesforce.com:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service

Microsoft's Azure: A competitor to AWS developed by Microsoft with emphasis on hosting the .Net runtime in the cloud:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure

Google's App Engine: A PaaS solution developed by Google for hosting applications in the Google cloud:

http://code.google.com/appengine

Microsoft Office Live: A SaaS solution provided by Microsoft for hosting Microsoft Office in the cloud:

http://www.officelive.com

SAS70 Type II audit: A classification of security audit that focuses on accountability and security of sensitive data:

http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2009/11/11/aws-completes-sas70-type-ii-audit

Elastic Block Store (EBS): A service provided by Amazon that provisions raw disk to Amazon EC2 instances:

http://aws.amazon.com/ebs

Public Cloud: Cloud services, which are made available to the general public:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing

Virtual Private Cloud (VPC): Cloud services, which are segmented or isolated from the general public:

http://aws.amazon.com/vpc

AWS EC2 console: The web console provided by Amazon to manage many functions from within AWS:

https://console.aws.amazon.com

Simple Storage Service (S3): An object store provided by Amazon that allows the storage of arbitrary objects in the cloud:

http://aws.amazon.com/s3

S3 Bucket: The top-level location defined within S3 that will hold all objects stored. S3 buckets must be uniquely named:

http://aws.amazon.com/s3/#getting-started

S3 Prefix: The equivalent to a namespace that further defines where an object is stored in S3:

http://aws.amazon.com/s3/#getting-started

Service Level Agreement (SLA): An agreement that defines what services will be provided at what quality and over what period. A SLA is not normally a sales contract but is used mainly to provide information on the level of service a web service will be provided at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_level_agreement

Reduced Redundancy Storage: A type of S3 storage that has fewer copies stored for redundancy, and is therefore cheaper to use:

http://aws.amazon.com/s3

EC2 'bundle': A copy of a running EC2 instance, which can be used to start up other instances:

Amazon Machine Image (AMI): Similar to a Bundle, an AMI is used as the base to start up new machine instances in EC2:

Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP): A protocol developed by Microsoft to allow the remote control of server desktops:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/186607

Ec2 'Terminated': Used to refer to an EC2 instance which when shut down is destroyed:

Ec2 'stop': Used to refer to an EC2 instance which when shut down is not destroyed and may be started up again:

Amazon EC2 Request Form: Used to request unusual services from Amazon. An example would be requiring more than five Elastic IP Addresses or more than 20 running EC2 instances:

http://aws.amazon.com/contact-us/ec2-request

Key Pair: Refers to a public/private key pair used by Amazon to secure access to AWS resources.

Elastic IP: A static IP address allocated by Amazon and guaranteed never to change for the lifetime of owning it. Currently limited to five per region:

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#Why_am_I_limited_to_5_Elastic_IP_addresses

Reserved Instance: An instance that is reserved in advance which guarantees access to pre-allocated resources when requested:

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/reserved-instances

Spot instances: Instances that are requested when there is extra availability. Usually costs less than a normal instance:

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot-instances

High Performance Compute (HPC): Used by Amazon to refer to a class of EC2 instance that has either very high network connectivity or powerful graphics accelerators:

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/hpc-applications

Storage Area Network (SAN): A network connected to a device which supplies disk storage. Can be either fiber optic or copper:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_area_network

Windows Perfmon: An application developed by Microsoft to display Windows WMI counters:

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI): A framework developed by Microsoft to supply events and alerting from running Windows instances:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394582%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS): A hosted MySQL service provided by Amazon:

http://aws.amazon.com/rds

Multi-AZ Deployments: Used in reference to RDS and describes a RDS configuration where there are multiple copies of MySQL running in different availability zones:

http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2010/05/18/announcing-multi-az-deployments-for-amazon-rds/

Read Replica: A copy of the database that is read only. Often used for reporting purposes.

Sysprep : A utility provided by Microsoft to allow the modification of an existing Windows server to be copied whilst ensuring that things such as security information and the internal SSID are deleted or modified:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sysprep

VMware Tools: The tools provided by VMware that are installed on virtual machines running in a VMware infrastructure environment:

http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/ws_newguest_tools_windows.html

System Identifier (SSID): The internal identifier used by Windows to uniquely identify itself on the network. Infamously, no two Windows servers with the same SSID may be connected to the same Domain Controller:

Windows Domain Controller: A server developed by Microsoft to handle security and authentication in the enterprise:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_controller

Sysprep answer file: A file used to provide pre-canned answers to the Sysprep program.

AMI ID: The unique ID given to an Amazon Machine Image or bundle.

Instance ID : The unique ID given to a running EC2 machine instance.

S3 Access Key: A key provided by Amazon and used to secure access to AWS resources. Normally used in conjunction with a Secret Access Key.

S3 Secret Access Key: A secret key (similar to a password) used to authenticate to AWS resources. Normally used in conjunction with an Access Key.

S3Fox: A Firefox plugin which enables users to access S3 from inside a browser:

http://www.s3fox.net

Tag Name: An optional name that may be allocated to certain AWS resources, such as EC2 instances and EBS disks.

Tracert: A program used to trace the TCP/IP route that is taken by a packet to get to its destination:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traceroute

Cmd Prompt: The Dos prompt in Windows.

Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC 2.6): A series of components developed by Microsoft to allow access to various database technologies:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms810805.aspx

SimpleDB : A service provided by Microsoft that allows simple key/value storage in the cloud:

http://aws.amazon.com/simpledb

On-Demand: An on-demand instance is an instance that has requested adhoc from the AWS EC2 pool. Other types of instances are 'reserved' and 'spot' instances.

Mixed Mode Security: A security mode used by SQL Server to allow both Microsoft Domain authentication as well as direct SQL Server authentication.

Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration: A security configuration enabled by default, which prevents the use of a web browser for most tasks on a Windows server:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd883248%28WS.10%29.aspx

SSH : A secure shell protocol, which uses encrypted communications between the client and the server:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Shell

PuTTY: A freeware program that implements the SSH protocol:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

Enterprise Manager (EM): The name of the application used by Oracle to manage resources once a database has been installed.

MySQL: An open source relational database now owned by Oracle:

http://www.mysql.com

Mysqldump: A utility used with MySQL to back up data as required:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysqldump.html

Mysql Shell: The command-line program used to access MySQL features:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/mysql.html

Visual Web Developer 2010 Express: A development suite provided by Microsoft to allow the development of web applications in the .Net framework:

http://www.microsoft.com/express/Web

Forms Security: A security model used for authentication where authentication is managed by the application:

http://www.asp.net/security/tutorials/an-overview-of-forms-authentication-vb

SQL Server Mirroring: A term used to describe the implementation of a database such that it has a copy offline, which is kept up-to-date in the event of failure of the original database:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189852.aspx

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF): A framework developed by Microsoft that encapsulates communication methods and protocols:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/aa663324

SQS Scratchpad: The utility provided by Amazon that allows the testing of SQS API elements:

http://aws.amazon.com/code/1254

AWS SDK for .Net: A .Net library provided by Amazon to facilitate the implementation of .Net applications which use AWS resources:

http://aws.amazon.com/sdkfornet

Software Development Kit (SDK): A generic description of anything that facilitates development.

Visibility Timeout: Used in SQS and defines how long a message stays invisible after it has been read from the queue, but before it has been deleted.

Web Hooks: A type of Web HTTP implementation, which allows third-party applications to call services remotely. An example of a site that demonstrates web hooks is:

http://www.postbin.org

Topic: Used in SNS and defines a namespace for notifications.

AWS Autoscaling: The ability for an infrastructure to dynamically increase or decrease the number of servers based on the demand:

http://aws.amazon.com/autoscaling

CloudWatch: A service provided by Amazon, which allows EC2 instances to provide alerts and statistics:

http://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch

Autoscaling Group: A group of servers, which are treated with the same rules for scaling up or down.

Policy: In Autoscaling, a policy defines the rules associated with an Autoscaling Group.

Amazon Resource Name (ARN): The internal unique name given to all Amazon resources. Not always visible.

Load Testing: A specific type of testing which artificially and repeatedly increases the load on an application:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_testing

Grinder: An open source tool used to automate Load Testing:

http://grinder.sourceforge.net

http://aws.amazon.com/amis/2055

Load Balancer 'Sticky': The term is used to define an AWS load balancer, which 'sticks' sessions to the same web server that they initiated contact on:

http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2010/04/08/support-for-session-stickiness-in-elastic-load-balancing

Denial of Service (DoS): A type of web attack that works by sending a large number of requests to an application in the hope that it will be swamped:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

Tests Per Second (TPS): The number of tests that can be executed in a second.

Patch Management: The process and policy of implementing patches onto production servers.

Quality Assurance (QA): A general term used to describe the quality of a service.