For years, the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) has been an oasis for developers looking to build modern apps without getting locked into the desert of some big vendor’s ecosystem. It’s a convenient, widely used open-source framework that makes application architecture easy for developers.
Today, if you are not breaking applications down into smaller components that can be independently deployed and scaled with flexibility and resilience to failure, you’re practically toast. Two major trends underscore this shift: First, every layer of the stack is now available “as a service,” enabling developers to outsource many responsibilities once deeply embedded in the stack, and to ultimately ship better products faster.
Linux is hot right now. Everybody is looking for Linux talent. Recruiters are knocking down the doors of anybody with Linux experience, and there are tens of thousands of jobs waiting to be filled. But what if you want to take advantage of this trend and you’re new to Linux? How do you get started?
Install Linux
It should almost go without saying, but the first key to learning Linux is to install Linux. Both the LFS101x and the LFS201 courses include detailed sections on installing and configuring Linux for the first time.
Take LFS101x
If you are completely new to Linux, the best place to start is our free LFS101x Introduction to Linux course. This online course is hosted by edX.org, and explores the various tools and techniques commonly used by Linux system administrators and end users to achieve their day-to-day work in a Linux environment. It is designed for experienced computer users who have limited or no previous exposure to Linux, whether they are working in an individual or enterprise environment. This course will give you a good working knowledge of Linux from both a graphical and command line perspective, allowing you to easily navigate through any of the major Linux distributions.
Look into LFS201
Once you’ve completed LFS101x, you’re ready to start diving into the more complicated tasks in Linux that will be required of you as a professional sysadmin. To gain those skills, you’ll want to take LFS201 Essentials of Linux System Administration. The course gives you in-depth explanations and instructions for each topic, along with plenty of exercises and labs to help you get real, hands-on experience with the subject matter.
If you would rather have a live instructor teach you or you have an employer who is interested in helping you become a Linux sysadmin, you might also be interested in LFS220 Linux System Administration. This course includes all the same topics as the LFS201 course, but is taught by an expert instructor who can guide you through the labs and answer any questions you have on the topics covered in the course.
Practice!
Practice makes perfect, and that’s as true for Linux as it is for any musical instrument or sport. Once you’ve installed Linux, use it regularly. Perform key tasks over and over again until you can do them easily without reference material. Learn the ins and outs of the command line as well as the GUI. This practice will ensure that you’ve got the skills and knowledge to be successful as a professional Linux sysadmin.
Get Certified
After you’ve taken LFS201 or LFS220 and you’ve gotten some practice, you are now ready to get certified as a system administrator. You’ll need this certification because this is how you will prove to employers that you have the necessary skills to be a professional Linux sysadmin.
There are several Linux certifications on the market today, and all of them have their place. However, most of these certifications are either centered on a specific distro (like Red Hat) or are purely knowledge-based and don’t demonstrate actual skill with Linux. The Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator certification is an excellent alternative for someone looking for a flexible, meaningful entry-level certification.
Get Involved
At this point you may also want to consider joining up with a local Linux Users Group (or LUG), if there’s one in your area. These groups are usually composed of people of all ages and experience levels, so regardless of where you are at with your Linux experience, you can find people with similar skill levels to bond with, or more advanced Linux users who can help answer questions and point you towards helpful resources. To find out if there’s a LUG near you, try looking on meetup.com, check with a nearby university, or just do a simple Internet search.
There are also many online communities available to you as you learn Linux. These sites and communities provide help and support to both individuals new to Linux or experienced administrators:
Last but not least, if you ever get stuck on something within Linux, don’t forget about Linux’s included documentation. Using the commands man (for manual), info and help, you can find information on virtually every aspect of Linux, right from within the operating system. The usefulness of these built-in resources cannot be overstated, and you’ll find yourself using them throughout your career, so you might as well get familiar with them early on.
In a world bursting with new tools and diverse development environments, it’s practically a necessity for any developer or engineer to learn some basic sysadmin commands. Specific commands and packages can help developers organize, troubleshoot, and optimize their applications and—when things go wrong—provide valuable triage information to operators and sysadmins.
Whether you are a new developer or want to manage your own application, the following 20 basic sysadmin commands can help you better understand your applications. They can also help you describe problems to sysadmins troubleshooting why an application might work locally but not on a remote host. These commands apply to Linux development environments, containers, virtual machines (VMs), and bare metal.
Sparky Linux 5, based on Debian testing (buster) was recently released. I have taken a look at the standard desktop versions (Xfce, LXQt, and MATE), and created my own i3 desktop version.
I mentioned in my recent post about the release of Debian 9 (stretch) that the changes in Debian should soon start filtering through into the Debian-derived distributions. Sure enough, Sparky Linux announced a new release last weekend.
Sparky Linux is one of the few distributions which offers two versions, based on the Debian stable and testing branches. The new release is Sparky Linux 5, based on Debian testing.
The release announcement gives a brief overview, but because this version of Sparky is a rolling release distribution, there are not huge changes from the previous version.
Continuous Delivery basically includes Continuous Integration. It is mandatory to have Continuous Integration to get Continuous Delivery. Let’s consider this definition from Effective DevOps by Jennifer Davis and Katherine Daniels.
“Continuous delivery is the process of releasing new software frequently through the use of automated testing and continuous integration…“
Continuous Integration is required. Additionally, they say, “It is closely related to CI, and is often thought of as taking CI one step further, so that beyond simply making sure that new changes are able to be integrated without causing regressions to automated tests, continuous delivery means that these changes are able to be deployed.”
Basically, it shows what we want to accomplish with Continuous Delivery, which is that someone checks in code, version control is in place, it runs the build and tests, it fails, it kicks it back. You can watch the video below for more details.
This then, brings us to Continuous Deployment. The difference between delivery and deployment is that the deployment is actually automated.
But, again, let’s check the definition from Effective DevOps because the authors are DevOps leaders in every sense of the word.
“Continuous deployment is the process of deploying changes to production through the engineering of application deployment that has defined tests and validations to minimize risk. While continuous delivery makes sure that the changes are able to be deployed, continuous deployment means that they get deployed into production.“
The key points here are that code is deployed, and Continuous Deployment includes both Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery.
There is mix and match; some things we automatically deploy and some things can be deployed while some things can be delivered.
The main point is that continuous deployment is all automated. You hit the button. You commit. It is gone.
This course is written and presented by John Willis, Director of Ecosystem Development at Docker. John has worked in the IT management industry for more than 35 years.
At the 2017 Red Hat Summit, several people asked me “We normally use full VMs to separate network services like DNS and DHCP, can we use containers instead?”. The answer is yes, and here’s an example of how to create a system container in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 today.
The Goal
Create a network service that can be updated independently of any other services of the system, yet easily managed and updated from the host.
Let’s explore setting up a BIND server running under systemd in a container. In this part, we’ll look at building our container, as well as managing the BIND configuration and data files.
In Part Two, we’ll look at how systemd on the host integrates with systemd in the container. We’ll explore managing the service in the container, and enabling it as a service on the host.
Creating the Bind Container
To get systemd working inside a container easily, we first need to add two packages on the host: oci-register-machine and oci-systemd-hook. The oci-systemd-hook hook allows us to run systemd in a container without needing to use a privileged container or manually configuring tmpfs and cgroups. The oci-register-machine hook allows us to keep track of the container with the systemd tools like systemctl and machinectl.
In just under one year, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will formally begin being enforced.
The statute requires any company, or entity, that handles personal data belonging to EU residents to comply with a broad set of requirements for protecting the privacy of that data. Significantly, GDPR vests EU residents with considerable control over their personal data, how it is used, and how it is made available to others. Under the statute, data subjects are the ultimate owners of their personal data, not the organizations that collect or use the data.
Companies that fail to comply with GDPR requirements can be fined between 2% and 4% of their annual global revenues or up to €20 million – which at current rates works out to just under $22.4 million USD – whichever is higher.
As we gear up to release our next e-book on the Kubernetes open source container orchestration engine (check with us in about a month), we have been reviewing how well K8s has been making its way into the enterprise — the true determinant of whether the software becomes an essential component of “the new stack,” so to speak.
Reviewing our notes from Kubecon 2017, held earlier this year in Berlin, we found some powerful testimonies from both Salesforce and Comcast. Salesforce is using it in a pilot program to power three cloud-native services, with plans to be running 20 services by the end of the year. When the company’s engineers were considering different orchestration options, they immediately appreciated the smarts behind the Kubernetes. After all, many had come from other jobs managing large at-scale workloads.
Serverless computing is becoming yet another way for cloud service providers to parse out access to enterprises looking to take advantage of virtualized services. Think containers, only slightly different.
Serverless computing architectures are designed to reduce the amount of overhead associated with offering services in the cloud. This includes the ability for a cloud provider to dynamically manage server resources. In a recent report and accompanying webinar, 451 Research described serverless computing as being similar to function-as-a-service (FaaS). In fact, Owen Rogers, research director for 451 Research’s Digital Economics Unit, said the terms are basically interchangeable.
It is really important for an IT graduate to keep up with the latest developments and advances in the technology to explore enough opportunities for excelling at the highest level. While you’d definitely need the best certifications to succeed at the highest level corporate environment with enough skill sets and expertise in the required area. There are various certifications that can add the desired value to your career and profile and sometimes it gets hard to choose the better one for your work profile.
MCSE Certification MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) is a top level certification provided by Microsoft to validate one’s authority in Microsoft products and servers all around the world. The certification requires you to first pass the MCSA (Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate) certification. Based on your choice of expertise and the field that you want to pursue, there are eight different options to opt for:
The certification exam judges you on advanced skills ranging from installing software to managing and troubleshooting networks in Microsoft Systems and Servers Enterprise. You have to answer just about 50 questions in the duration of 90 minutes or so and get a score of 750 out of 1000 to secure passing marks in the examination. The passing rate in the first attempt of examination is 70-80% and that is not very bad as compared to other high level certification exams.
CCNA
The CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate) Certification is one of the most advanced level certifications that Cisco provides for individuals seeking expertise in Cisco enterprise. The certification requires extensive skills of troubleshooting and configuring a network and knowledge of installing and configuring WAN and LAN along with routers and switches. The certification gives you wide range of expertise in Cisco enterprise to mould your career in the best shape possible. It is good enough to give you a high amount of opportunities at the corporate level.
The Cisco Certification exam is one of the toughest certification exams to crack in a single attempt. The certification tests your ability to troubleshoot, manage, secure and configure a medium sized network in highly advanced and real time Cisco enterprise along with your knowledge of routers and switches management and configuration. You have to answer about 45 multiple choice questions in the duration of 90 minutes or so. The exam has a success rate of just 40% in the first attempt and can give you a shocker or a wakeup call if you’re underprepared.
Which is the best?
Both the certifications are highly valued in the industry of IT professional and they have their own set of pros and cons over time. Which one is best for you certainly depend on what you’re seeking and in what field you want to excel in future? While MCSE gives you more scope and opportunities, it does require you to give seven different examinations to earn the certification. But the CCNA certification gives you more credibility and expertise if you’re planning to pursue a career in networking and security and moreover you have to pass just a single examination to earn the certification. While CCNA gives you more authority as a network administrator, the MCSE can consolidate your position as a system administrator.
CCNA professionals earn more salaries than MCSE professional but the margin is not very much. It is also observed that people with CCNA certifications get more jobs as compared to the MCSE certified professionals.
Conclusion
Both the certifications require you to recertify within 3-4 years time. The MCSE certification is the highest level Microsoft certification while one can opt for more advanced level certifications in Cisco environment after CCNA like; CCNP (Cisco Certified Network Professional) and CCIE (Cisco Certified Internet Professional). The Microsoft certification is more popular and the fact that you’ll have to give 8 different exams to attain the credential means that you’ll have to invest more time, money and resources to get through but it also means that you’ll also have a wide range of skills to broadcast your employers. The CCNA certification gives you more leverage in WAN and LAN field along with superiority in networking and security and requires you to just one exam. What is best for you totally depend on your present job profile and where you want to go in the future.
