Core concepts The following concepts are key to understanding the Management Console service and CDP in general: EnvironmentsIn CDP, an environment is a logical subset of your cloud provider account including a specific virtual network. You can register as many environments as you require.CredentialsA credential allows CDP to authenticate with your cloud provider account and obtain authorization to provision cloud provider resources on your behalf.Data LakesIn CDP, a Data Lake is a service for creating a protective ring of security and governance around your data, whether the data is stored in cloud object storage or HDFS.Shared resourcesCDP allows you to manage and reuse certain resources across environments. Classic clustersClassic clusters are on-prem Cloudera Distribution of Hadoop (CDH) or CDP Data Center (CDP-DC) clusters registered in CDP.