🐄 Farm animals 💻 Disposable servers

cattle

7.5

Computer servers in the cloud are treated as things that can be easily replaced

noun
/ˈkætəl/

Jargon

: ganado (jerga informática)

By using cattle principles, we automate the deployment of virtual machines across multiple environments.

Examples

Since the cattle projects came, there have been many changes here, Wheeler.

American Virgin (2009)
Luckily, the weather is getting cooler, and the cattle can finally make use of the tall fescue!

Blog text (30)
They are cattle.

Phantoms (1998)
In cloud computing, we treat servers as cattle, easily replaced without individual maintenance.
The DevOps team manages their infrastructure like cattle, ensuring scalability and resilience.

Idioms

all hat and no cattle

Offensive

1 9.9

Acting important but having no real skill or success

Compounds

cattle ranch

13 2.8

A large farm where people raise many cows on wide land

cattle drive

6 6.3

A trip moving a large group of cows, often on horseback, over long distances

cattle car

4 4.7

A rail car that carries cows or other farm animals

beef cattle

3 2.6

Cattle raised mainly for their meat

dairy cattle

2 2.4

Animals kept to give milk rather than meat

cattle thief

2 6.7

A person who steals cows or other farm animals

cattle farm

2 1.6

A farm where cows are raised for meat, milk or other products

cattle pen

1 2.1

An enclosure for keeping cattle like cows and bulls

cattle guard

1 4.3

A set of metal bars over a gap in a road that stops cows from crossing

cattle boat

1 6.7

A ship that carries many cows and other farm animals

cattle trail

1 2.8

A path used to drive cattle to market or to other grazing land

cattle breeding

1 3.5

Raising and mating cows to get animals that give more milk or are healthier

cattle egret

Specialized

1 4.8

A small white bird that follows cows to eat insects they disturb

cattle plague

Archaic

1 8.8

A very contagious disease of cattle that usually kills them with fever and severe diarrhea

roundup of cattle

1 4.9

Gathering cattle to count, brand, or move them

cattle cake

1 6.2

A solid block of rich food made for cows to eat

cattle class

Offensive

1 6.0

The cheapest, most crowded seats on an airplane with little space

cattle grid

1 3.9

A metal grate over a gap in a road that stops cows from walking across

cattle brush

6.9

A thing cows rub against to scratch and clean themselves

Surface Forms

cattle singular

cattles plural

Etymology

Cattle is used in computing as a modern image: think of many similar animals in a herd that you replace, not a single special animal like a 'pet'. This idea links to the older meaning of cattle as replaceable farm animals counted as 'property', so in cloud systems a broken machine is simply replaced rather than fixed.