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diff --git a/doc/architecture/blueprints/cells/glossary.md b/doc/architecture/blueprints/cells/glossary.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000000..c3ec5fd12e4 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/architecture/blueprints/cells/glossary.md @@ -0,0 +1,106 @@ +--- +stage: enablement +group: Tenant Scale +description: 'Cells: Glossary' +--- + +# Cells: Glossary + +We use the following terms to describe components and properties of the Cells architecture. + +## Cell + +> Pod was renamed to Cell in <https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/-/merge_requests/121163> + +A Cell is a set of infrastructure components that contains multiple top-level groups that belong to different organizations. The components include both datastores (PostgreSQL, Redis etc.) and stateless services (web etc.). The infrastructure components provided within a Cell are shared among organizations and their top-level groups but not shared with other Cells. This isolation of infrastructure components means that Cells are independent from each other. + +<img src="images/term-cell.png" height="200"> + +### Cell properties + +- Each cell is independent from the others +- Infrastructure components are shared by organizations and their top-level groups within a Cell +- More Cells can be provisioned to provide horizontal scalability +- A failing Cell does not lead to failure of other Cells +- Noisy neighbor effects are limited to within a Cell +- Cells are not visible to organizations; it is an implementation detail +- Cells may be located in different geographical regions (for example, EU, US, JP, UK) + +Discouraged synonyms: GitLab instance, cluster, shard + +## Cluster + +A cluster is a collection of Cells. + +<img src="images/term-cluster.png" height="300"> + +### Cluster properties + +- A cluster holds cluster-wide metadata, for example Users, Routes, Settings. + +Discouraged synonyms: whale + +## Organizations + +GitLab references [Organizations in the initial set up](../../../topics/set_up_organization.md) and users can add a (free text) organization to their profile. There is no Organization entity established in the GitLab codebase. + +As part of delivering Cells, we propose the introduction of an `organization` entity. Organizations would represent billable entities or customers. + +Organizations are a known concept, present for example in [AWS](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/whitepapers/latest/organizing-your-aws-environment/core-concepts.html) and [GCP](https://cloud.google.com/resource-manager/docs/cloud-platform-resource-hierarchy#organizations). + +Organizations work under the following assumptions: + +1. Users care about what happens within their organizations. +1. Features need to work within an organization. +1. Only few features need to work across organizations. +1. Users understand that the majority of pages they view are only scoped to a single organization at a time. +1. Organizations are located on a single cell. + + + +### Organization properties + +- Top-level groups belong to organizations +- Organizations are isolated from each other by default meaning that cross-group features will only work for group that exist within a single organization +- User namespaces must not belong to an organization + +Discouraged synonyms: Billable entities, customers + +## Top-Level group + +Top-level group is the name given to the top most group of all other groups. Groups and projects are nested underneath the top-level group. + +Example: + +`https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/`: + +- `gitlab-org` is a `top-level group`; the root for all groups and projects of an organization +- `gitlab` is a `project`; a project of the organization. + +The top-level group has served as the defacto Organization entity. With the creation of Organization, top-level groups will be [nested underneath Organizations](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/394796). + +Over time there won't be a distinction between a top-level group and a group. All features that make Top-level groups different from groups will move to Organization. + +Discouraged synonyms: Root-level namespace + + + +### Top-level group properties + +- Top-level groups belonging to an organization are located on the same Cell +- Top-level groups can interact with other top-level groups that belong to the same organization + +## Users + +Users are available globally and not restricted to a single Cell. Users belong to a single organization, but can participate in many organizations through group and project membership with varying permissions. Inside organizations, users can create multiple top-level groups. User activity is not limited to a single organization but their contributions (for example TODOs) are only aggregated within an organization. This avoids the need for aggregating across cells. + +### User properties + +- Users are shared globally across all Cells +- Users can create multiple top-level groups +- Users can be a member of multiple top-level groups +- Users belong to one organization. See [!395736](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/395736) +- Users can be members of groups and projects in different organizations +- Users can administer organizations +- User activity is aggregated in an organization +- Every user has one personal namespace |