systems administrator, or sysadmin (sometimes called ops, for operations).
The traditional title for someone who creates the software that runs on
those systems is software developer. Over the past few years, a new title
has emerged, DevOps. DevOps combine many of the talents and
responsibilities of sysadmins and developers but often with a cloud
computing environment focus and some specific refinements. They aren’t
purely one or the other and often don’t fit neatly into other existing
categories, such as engineer, but they do combine many of the skills of all
of these while adding a QA-like focus on making sure new features do not
break anything that was working previously. DevOps are the ones who
develop large applications to run on cloud resources while simplifying the
orchestration of those resources with automation and configuration
management. This chapter is not only for DevOps, but it describes the sorts
of tools and environments that these folks are likely to love.Ubuntu Cloud is a stack of applications from Canonical that are included in
the Ubuntu Server Edition. These applications make it easy to install and
configure an Ubuntu-based cloud. The software is free and open source, but
Canonical offers paid technical support.
INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS
Install instructions change regularly, and the most up-to-date version is
always on the provider’s site. Instead of walking through the install
instructions, this chapter provides a high-level view to help you understand
how a cloud can be set up and work, why you should care, who the big
players are, and where to look for the next steps.Why a Cloud?
Businesses and enterprises have built computer networks for years. There are
many reasons, but usually networks are built because specific computation or
data processing tasks are made easier and faster by using more than one
computer. The size of a network generally depends on the tasks that need to
be done. Building a network usually entails taking a detailed survey of needs,
analyzing those requirements, and gathering together the necessary hardware
and software to fulfill those needs now, perhaps with a little room for growth
if money permits.
Cloud computing is designed to make that easier by providing resources such
as computing power and storage as services on the Internet in a way that is
easy to access remotely, available on demand, simple to provision and scale,
and highly dynamic. In the ideal case, this saves both time and money.