.. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
.. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

**Definition of terms**

Different SDOs and communities use different terminology related to
NFV/Cloud/SDN. This list tries to define an OPNFV terminology,
mapping/translating the OPNFV terms to terminology used in other contexts.


.. glossary::

    NFV
        Network Function Virtualization

    NFVI
        Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure; totality of all hardware
        and software components which build up the environment in which VNFs are
        deployed.

    VIM
        Virtualized Infrastructure Manager; functional block that is responsible
        for controlling and managing the NFVI compute, storage and network
        resources, usually within one operator's Infrastructure Domain, e.g.
        NFVI Point of Presence (NFVI-PoP).

    Virtual Machine (VM)
        Virtualized computation environment that behaves very much like a
        physical computer/server.

    Virtual network
        Virtual network routes information among the network interfaces of VM
        instances and physical network interfaces, providing the necessary
        connectivity.

    VNF
        Virtualized Network Function. Implementation of an Network Function that
        can be deployed on a Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure
        (NFVI).

..
    Revision: 65386cbf1e43c994ac602d0e7ea8dea670bb3c4d
    Build date: 2016-04-19