Preface

Ubuntu is an exciting platform. You can find it everywhere—desktops, laptops, phones, and especially servers. The Server edition enables administrators to create efficient, flexible, and highly available servers that empower organizations with the power of open source. As Ubuntu administrators, we're in good company—according to W3Techs, Ubuntu is the most widely deployed distribution on the Web in regards to Linux. With the release of Ubuntu 16.04, this platform becomes even more exciting!

In this book, we will dive right into Ubuntu Server and learn all the concepts needed to manage our servers and configure them to perform all kinds of neat tasks, such as serving web pages, managing virtual machines, and sharing data with other users, among many other things. We'll start our journey right in the first chapter, where we'll walk through the installation of Ubuntu Server 16.04, which will serve as the foundation for the rest of the book. As we proceed through the journey, we'll look at managing users, connecting to networks, and controlling processes. Later, we'll implement important technologies such as DHCP, DNS, Apache, and MariaDB, among others. We'll even set up our own ownCloud server along the way.

Finally, the end of the book will cover various things we can do in order to troubleshoot issues, as well as prevent and recover from disasters.