Glossary#
Definitions for Reply CMP and FinOps terms. Entries are alphabetically ordered.
Actual Cost
The cost recorded on the day it appears on the cloud invoice. An upfront Reserved Instance purchase appears in full on the purchase date. Compare with Amortised Cost.
Allocation Rule
A rule in FinOps → Allocate that assigns cloud resources to a Group, Environment or Project. Rules can match tags, resource type, Connection and other metadata. See Allocate — Assign Cost Ownership.
Amortised Cost
A view that spreads upfront reservation purchases over their commitment term. It is useful for steady operational tracking. Compare with Actual Cost.
Bring Your Own Runner (BYOR)
The Provisioning model where Terraform executes in a tenant-owned Azure DevOps pipeline or GitHub Actions workflow. Reply CMP governs immutable operation input, guardrails and evidence; the tenant owns execution logs and state. See Configure runners and Terraform state.
Catalog Item (legacy term)
The former name for a Terraform resource template. Provisioning now uses registered Modules with immutable, approved Module Versions. See Module registry.
Claim Identity
The convention-based Microsoft Entra application managed by Reply CMP for one tenant. Azure DevOps or GitHub uses short-lived workload identity federation with this identity to claim an operation and return evidence. It has no customer-cloud role and is never a Terraform credential.
CMP Agent
The Reply CMP conversational AI assistant available from the top navigation. It can answer authorised questions about cloud resources, costs and recommendations and generate HTML reports. See CMP Agent.
Committed Use Discount (CUD)
A GCP discount in exchange for a one- or three-year usage commitment. It is comparable to Azure Reserved Instances or AWS Savings Plans.
Connection
An authenticated link between Reply CMP and an Azure subscription, AWS account or GCP project. Provisioning pins the exact vault version of every linked Connection when an operation is created. See Connect a Provider.
Connection Alias
A stable short name for a Connection inside one Deployment, such as default, network
or data. Aliases map to Terraform provider aliases. One linked read-write Azure alias
is also selected to authenticate Azure Blob state.
CostOnly (Discovery support level)
A discovered or billed resource that Reply CMP can use for cost analysis, but does not promote to a complete CMDB item. CostOnly resources usually lack reliable provider metadata, type-specific enrichment, or relationship coverage. Compare with Full (Discovery support level).
Deployment
A Reply CMP workspace that groups Resources, linked cloud Connections and aliases, one tenant runner and one protected Terraform state file. The main statuses are Valid, Error, Needs attention and Ready for removal. The UI shows Setup required when the runner or state is incomplete. See Manage Deployments and operations.
Dispatch Credential
A vault secret used by the Reply CMP control plane only to discover and start an Azure DevOps pipeline or GitHub workflow. It is not sent to Terraform and is distinct from the cloud Connections linked to the Deployment.
Draft (Resource status)
A Resource whose desired input, module version or reference changed after the last successful Apply. Saving a Draft does not change the cloud.
Drift
A difference between live cloud configuration and the desired configuration recorded by Terraform. A fresh Plan exposes the difference for review.
Full (Discovery support level)
A first-class Discovery inventory resource. Full resources have a recognised provider type, category, icon where available, history, provider metadata, and graph relationships where available. Compare with CostOnly (Discovery support level).
Environment
A FinOps hierarchy node representing a deployment environment, such as Production, Staging or Development. See Organisation Model.
Exact Saved Plan
The immutable Terraform binary plan whose source manifest, plan JSON digest, SHA-256 and policy fingerprint are recorded for one operation. Apply executes this plan and cannot replace it with a hidden re-plan.
Group
A top-level FinOps allocation node representing a business unit, team or department. Groups contain Environments and Projects. See Organisation Model.
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
A protocol for connecting AI models to authorised data sources and tools. Reply CMP uses MCP to expose permission-gated tools to the CMP Agent.
Module (Provisioning)
A stable registry record for one Terraform module at one repository path. A monorepo therefore has one Module record per registered path.
Module Version
An immutable semantic version bound to an exact source commit, schema.json, provider
locks and content digests. Only approved versions can be selected for new Resource pins.
Operation
One Plan or Apply request for an entire Deployment. It records the runner execution, pinned module and Connection versions, state reference, guardrail decision and evidence.
Policy Fingerprint
A deterministic digest of the exact guardrail versions evaluated for one saved plan. It prevents a decision from being reused for a different plan.
Policy Guardrail
A versioned rule that evaluates structured Terraform plan evidence before Apply. A guardrail can block Apply or record a warning. See Policy guardrails.
Project
The most granular FinOps allocation node, nested below an Environment and used for a specific workload or initiative. See Organisation Model.
Quota
A per-tenant limit on the number of platform resources (e.g., max connections, max deployments, max dashboards). Current utilisation vs quota limits are visible in Tenant → Quotas. See Tenant Quotas.
ReAct Pattern
An AI-agent approach that alternates reasoning, tool actions and observation until it can answer. Reply CMP uses it for AI Savings Estimation. See AI Savings Estimation.
Relationship Graph
The Discovery graph that links resources with typed relationships such as Uses, Attached To, Member Of, Contains, Routes To, Secured By, and Depends On. Relationships can be provider-sourced or AI-inferred. See Browse Your Cloud Resources.
Reserved Instance (RI)
An Azure or AWS discount in exchange for a one- or three-year resource commitment. Charges can be viewed as Actual or Amortised cost.
Resource (Provisioning)
One configured instance of an approved Module Version inside a Deployment. Resource statuses are Draft, Latest, Error and Deleted. See Add Resources from approved modules.
Runner
The customer-owned Azure DevOps pipeline or GitHub Actions workflow that receives a one-time operation, builds an isolated Terraform workspace and retains the complete native logs.
Savings Plan
An AWS or Azure pricing model that discounts eligible compute usage in exchange for a one- or three-year hourly-spend commitment.
State Authentication
The active read-write Azure Connection alias selected in Runner & state. Its exact vault credential version authenticates both the matching Azure provider configuration and the Azure Blob backend for that operation.
Stream ID
A unique identifier that links all audit log events for a single entity (a deployment, a connection, a policy, etc.) into a continuous chain. Filter by Stream ID in the Audit Logs to see the full lifecycle of any entity. See Audit Logs.
Support Level
Discovery classification that determines whether a resource is a Full CMDB item or a CostOnly resource. Support level is assigned from the provider-specific supported resource type registry.
Type-Specific Properties
Provider-native metadata collected for supported Discovery resource types. Examples include VM size details, network attachments, database configuration, bucket settings, or service-specific identifiers that do not fit the common multi-cloud schema.
T-1
Yesterday’s data. Cloud billing APIs normally make the latest complete cost data available on the following day.
Tenant
A Reply CMP workspace for one organisation or team. Connections, users, roles, modules, Deployments and policies are isolated by tenant.
Terraform State (tfstate)
The file that maps Terraform resource addresses to provider objects. New Deployments keep it under a deterministic per-Deployment key in a tenant-owned Azure Blob container. Reply CMP never proxies or returns the raw file. See Configure runners and Terraform state.