Glossary

Key terms and definitions for CARTO Self-Hosted

This page defines the terms used throughout the CARTO Self-Hosted documentation. The Operations and lifecycle section in particular clarifies words that are easy to confuse — such as update, upgrade, backup, restore, and key rotation.

Platform and components

Term	Definition
CARTO Self-Hosted	A deployment of the full CARTO platform on customer-managed infrastructure.
Admin Console	The web-based management interface provided by Kots for configuring and managing CARTO Self-Hosted deployments.
Analytics Toolbox	CARTO's set of spatial analysis functions that run natively inside your data warehouse.
CARTO Data Warehouse	An optional built-in data warehouse provided by CARTO for users who don't have their own.
Data warehouse	The external analytical database (BigQuery, Snowflake, Redshift, Databricks, etc.) where your spatial data lives. It is managed by you and sits outside the CARTO backup scope.
Metadata database	The PostgreSQL database CARTO uses to store platform metadata — maps, workflows, connections, users, and organizations. Restore-critical.
In-memory cache	The Valkey (Redis-compatible) cache used by CARTO for sessions and transient data. Ephemeral — not part of a backup.
Object storage	The buckets CARTO uses for file storage. A deployment has an assets bucket and a temp bucket.
Assets bucket	Object storage holding persistent files that cannot be regenerated on demand — map thumbnails and custom markers. Should be backed up.
Temp bucket	Object storage holding ephemeral, regenerable data (e.g. import staging). Does not need backing up.
Support bundle	A diagnostic archive generated by Kots or the support-bundle CLI tool, used by CARTO Support for troubleshooting.

Deployment and configuration

Term	Definition
Helm	The Kubernetes package manager used for the Orchestrated container (Advanced) deployment method.
Kots	Kubernetes Off-The-Shelf — a tool that simplifies deploying and managing CARTO Self-Hosted with a built-in Admin Console. Used by the Single VM and Standard Orchestrated deployment methods.
customizations.yaml	The Helm values override file used to configure a CARTO Self-Hosted Helm deployment.
Configuration	The restore-critical settings of an installation: the Kots config, or — for Helm — the carto-values.yaml, carto-secrets.yaml, and customizations.yaml files. See How Configuration Works.
Release version	A dated CARTO Self-Hosted version identifier (for example 2026.5.14). Moving between release versions is an update / upgrade.

Operations and lifecycle

Words that are easy to confuse. CARTO uses update and upgrade interchangeably to mean "move to a newer release version." Separately, the Helm command for applying any change is also helm upgrade — so a phrase like "upgrade your installation to apply the changes" can refer to re-applying configuration without changing the version. The table below keeps the two ideas distinct: changing the version (update / upgrade) vs. applying a configuration change (apply changes).

Term	Definition
Update (also: upgrade)	Moving your installation from one release version to a newer one. This automatically runs forward-only database schema migrations. Always create a backup first. See Update to a new version.
Apply changes (reconfigure)	Re-deploying an installation to apply a configuration change (new bucket keys, SSO settings, etc.) without changing the release version. On Helm this also uses the helm upgrade command, which is why the word "upgrade" sometimes appears here even though no version change is involved. See Apply configuration changes.
Rollback / Downgrade	Reverting to an earlier release version. Not supported — schema migrations are forward-only. To recover a previous state you must restore a backup taken before the update and reinstall the matching version.
Backup	A copy of the two restore-critical elements — your configuration and the contents of the metadata database — plus the assets bucket. It lets you rebuild an identical deployment. See Backups & Restore.
Restore	Rebuilding an installation from a backup: reapplying the saved configuration and loading the metadata database contents back in.
Key rotation	Replacing secrets and credentials — custom bucket keys, BigQuery OAuth connections, Google basemaps keys, and LDS API keys — and then re-applying the configuration. Distinct from updates and backups. See Rotating keys.
Support lifecycle	CARTO support is available only for Self-Hosted versions released within the past 12 months, which is why regular updates are recommended.
Uninstall	Removing a CARTO Self-Hosted installation. See Uninstall.