Mastering Linux Administration

Develop advanced skills for working with Linux systems on-premises and in the cloud

▶Book Description
Linux plays a significant role in modern data center management and provides great versatility in deploying and managing your workloads on-premises and in the cloud. This book covers the important topics you need to know about for your everyday Linux administration tasks.

The book starts by helping you understand the Linux command line and how to work with files, packages, and filesystems. You'll then begin administering network services and hardening security, and learn about cloud computing, containers, and orchestration. Once you've learned how to work with the command line, you'll explore the essential Linux commands for managing users, processes, and daemons and discover how to secure your Linux environment using application security frameworks and firewall managers. As you advance through the chapters, you'll work with containers, hypervisors, virtual machines, Ansible, and Kubernetes. You'll also learn how to deploy Linux to the cloud using AWS and Azure.

By the end of this Linux book, you'll be well-versed with Linux and have mastered everyday administrative tasks using workflows spanning from on-premises to the cloud. If you also find yourself adopting DevOps practices in the process, we'll consider our mission accomplished.

▶What You Will Learn
-Understand how Linux works and learn basic to advanced Linux administration skills
-Explore the most widely used commands for managing the Linux filesystem, network, security, and more
-Get to grips with different networking and messaging protocols
-Find out how Linux security works and how to configure SELinux, AppArmor, and Linux iptables
-Work with virtual machines and containers and understand container orchestration with Kubernetes
-Work with containerized workflows using Docker and Kubernetes
-Automate your configuration management workloads with Ansible

▶Key Features
-Become proficient in everyday Linux administration tasks by mastering the Linux command line and using automation
-Work with the Linux filesystem, packages, users, processes, and daemons
-Deploy Linux to the cloud with AWS, Azure, and Kubernetes

▶Who This Book Is For
If you are a Linux administrator who wants to understand the fundamentals and as well as modern concepts of Linux system administration, this book is for you. Windows System Administrators looking to extend their knowledge to the Linux OS will also benefit from this book.

▶What this book covers
- Chapter 1, Installing Linux, provides a practical guide to installing Linux on a personal computer or virtual machine. The chapter includes hands-on workshops for working with Ubuntu and RHEL/CentOS Linux distributions.

- Chapter 2, The Linux Filesystem, explores the Linux shell and filesystem, with the related commands for manipulating files and directories.

- Chapter 3, Linux Software Management, introduces some of the most common Linux package managers, including DEB, RPM, APT, YUM, Snap, and Flatpak.

- Chapter 4, Managing Users and Groups, looks at working with users and groups and managing the related system permissions.

- Chapter 5, Working with Processes, Daemons, and Signals, takes a deep dive into Linux processes and daemons and the related inter-process communication mechanisms.

- Chapter 6, Working with Disks and Filesystems, introduces some of the most common Linux filesystem types, such as Ext4, XFS, and btrfs. The chapter also covers disks, partitions, and logical volume management in Linux.

- Chapter 7, Networking with Linux, is a concise primer on Linux networking internals, including the OSI and TCP/IP models, networking protocols, and services. The chapter also briefly touches upon network security.

- Chapter 8, Configuring Linux Servers, explores some of the most common Linux networking servers and services, such as DNS, DHCP, NFS, Samba, FTP, and web servers.

- Chapter 9, Securing Linux, looks at the Linux application security frameworks, including SELinux and AppArmor. The chapter also covers different firewalls and firewall managers, such as Netfilter, iptables, nftables, firewalld, and ufw.

- Chapter 10, Disaster Recovery, Diagnostics, and Troubleshooting, provides a high-level overview of Linux disaster recovery and troubleshooting practices, including backup-restore and troubleshooting common system issues.

- Chapter 11, Working with Containers and Virtual Machines, explores virtual and containerized Linux environments, focusing on different hypervisors and Docker Engine.

- Chapter 12, Cloud Computing Essentials, is a brief overview of cloud technologies, describing the SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS solutions and service providers.

- Chapter 13, Deploying to the Cloud with AWS and Azure, looks at Linux deployments in the cloud, using AWS EC2 instances and Azure VMs.

- Chapter 14, Deploying Applications with Kubernetes, provides a practical guide to using Kubernetes on-prem and in the cloud with EKS and AKS.

- Chapter 15, Automating Workflows with Ansible, explores automated configuration management workloads using Ansible.