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. More information
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. More information
Application Build	An element containing execution information and meta data about an Application Install. More information
Application Instance	A single deployed application build, e.g. a deployed game server, or a deployed utility. More information
AWS	Amazon Web Services - we always refer to the EC2 section.
Bare Metal Server	A physical server in a data center. More information.
Deployment Environment	The topmost element that encompasses all of your deployment related configurations for a hosted game. More information
Deployment Profile	The profile that defines how and where your applications are deployed. More information
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. More information
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. More information
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. More information.