Meaning of Ephemeral in Computing | Generated by AI
Question: What does “ephemeral” mean?
Answer:
Temporary / short-lived / existing only briefly, then gone.
In CS contexts you’ll see it constantly:
- Ephemeral storage — disk that vanishes when the container/VM dies (e.g. Docker’s writable layer, EC2 instance store)
- Ephemeral port — OS-assigned temporary port for outbound TCP connections (range 49152–65535)
- Ephemeral environment — a throwaway deploy spun up per PR, torn down after merge
- Ephemeral key — crypto key used once then discarded (Diffie-Hellman ephemeral = DHE/ECDHE in TLS)
Opposite: persistent / durable.
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