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Terminology

The following terms are used throughout the documentation pages and should be understood in order to fully comprehend the components and inner workings of the i3D.net Game Hosting service.

Term
Description
Allocation The process of allocating (reserving) a game server for players to connect to. This is normally done by a Matchmaker.
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Application The application you want the Platform to host. This can be a game server application, or any kind of utility you want to run alongside your game server.
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Application Build An element containing execution information and meta data about an Application Install.
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Application Instance A single deployed application build, e.g. a deployed game server, or a deployed utility.
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AWS Amazon Web Services - we always refer to the EC2 section.
Bare Metal Server A physical server in a data center.
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Deployment Environment The topmost element that encompasses all of your deployment related configurations for a hosted game.
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Deployment Profile The profile that defines how and where your applications are deployed.
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Game Instance An Application Instance of type "game". See Application Instance.
Game Server An Application Instance of type "game". See Application Instance.
GCP Google Cloud Platform - we always refer to the Compute section.
Host A machine that hosts your application instances. This can be a bare metal machine, or a virtual machine - the word Host is agnostic in this sense and simply refers to an OS in which programs can be installed and run.
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Matchmaker A back end service run by game publishers that allocates game servers in the regions where game clients want to play a game or match and informs said game clients about the game server details, so they know where to connect to.
Patching This is the process of updating game servers / utilities to a new version of the software.
Preloading To shorten deployment times during an update process, the software archive / build you want to deploy will be uploaded and extracted onto all applicable hosts, before starting the actual deployment process.
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Utility Instance See Application Instance.
Virtual Machine A virtualized server. Often hosted at e.g. AWS or GCP, on a large bare metal server that hosts one or more virtual machines.
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