Everybody’s talking about cloud services today. It’s one of the hot new buzzwords, but most of the conversation is about how to develop custom applications in the cloud. While that is a really important topic, it ignores another very useful attribute of a distributed cloud: as a great place to build and host an IT infrastructure.
The dearth of discussion about this overlooked facet of cloud computing is the reason I wrote this book. I was especially interested in discussing the topic in the context of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud offering because it is my opinion that Amazon’s service represents one of the most flexible and cost-effective of the major cloud vendors. I especially feel strongly that the AWS cloud is particularly well suited to hosting a custom IT infrastructure.
Apparently the good people at O’Reilly agreed!
Are you an IT administrator (by choice or force)? Have you ever wondered what it might be like to run your entire corporate IT infrastructure in a cloud that you controlled completely?
If so, then this book is for you!
In this book I will walk you through how to set up a complete IT infrastructure in the AWS cloud. You don’t need to have a lot of IT experience to follow along—just a willingness to try new things and experiment a bit.
The AWS cloud offering is one of the most comprehensive ever created. It also has the advantage of being owned and operated by a company that knows a thing or two about always-on availability! Those reasons alone make it a great place for a new IT infrastructure and a very interesting topic for a book.
This book is divided into eight chapters, each one guiding you through the process of adding a critical service to your new IT cloud.
Chapter 1, To the Cloud!, is a basic introduction to the AWS cloud and lays the basic foundation for your new network. In it you will configure a VPN in order to securely access your growing family of resources.e
Chapter 2, Directories, Controllers, and Authorities—Oh My!, will show you how to transform your network into a real enterprise infrastructure by creating a Windows domain.
Chapter 3, Let There Be Email!, will guide you through the process of setting up enterprise email using Microsoft Exchange. You will also learn the basics of special DNS records called Mail Exchanger (MX) records and how to create your own managed DNS in the AWS cloud.
Chapter 4, Doing Things the Easy Way, will bring you up close and personal with some of the very powerful command-line tools that Amazon gives you. In particular you will learn how to take your custom-made virtual machine and import it directly into your virtual network.
Chapter 5, Do You Have Some Time to Chat?, will cover the fastest growing form of enterprise communication: chat. Yes, you read that right. Chat/instant messaging is starting to take over in the enterprise, and in this chapter you will learn how to set up your own services to support it.
Chapter 6, The Voice of a New Generation, will guide you through installing and configuring your very own voice-over-IP (VoIP) system so you can make and receive Internet-based telephone calls in your growing enterprise.
Chapter 7, Keeping Your Network Fit, Trim, and Healthy, will introduce you to the tools you will use to keep your new network healthy and safe. They include backup and restore, intrusion detection, and fault alerting.
Chapter 8, For Those About to Grok, We Salute You, the final chapter, will take you under the hood of some of the more complicated topics covered in the previous chapters. This chapter is optional reading and is intended for people who like to take things apart just to see how they work.
Tip
A quick word about the chapter titles. Many of the titles and section headings of the chapters are bad puns. They cover the waterfront from the Old Testament to famous science fiction, heavy metal hits, and something my great-grandmother used to say in Yiddish. None of them are particularly obscure (even the one from my great-grandmother) but if you should find yourself struggling to get the reference, feel free to drop me a line at dave@rensin.com.
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I wrote my last book in 1997. Back then I was sure that I was done writing books. When I put away my word processor for what I thought would be the last time, I had failed to meet only one of my objectives in becoming an author—to write a book for O’Reilly Media.
When I was in college and really starting to cut my teeth as a programmer, the O’Reilly catalog of books was incomprehensibly valuable to me in my learning. Titles like sed & awk, lex and yacc, Programming Perl, High Performance Computing, and others taught me much of what I still hold dear as a programmer.
They were books written by geeks for geeks and I read as many as I could get my hands on.
Back then I would never have dreamed that one day I would get the chance to contribute to that library, and I will forever be grateful to Tim O’Reilly for creating this one special place where all these wonderful books could get published.
I would also like to thank Mike Hendrickson, who read my proposal, liked it, and got it green-lighted by the editorial board. He’s the one who let me jump from O’Reilly fan to O’Reilly author, and for that he will forever have my thanks.
Andy Oram has been the most patient editor I’ve ever worked with. He’s gone to bat for me on issues large and small, has provided unvarnished and exceptionally helpful commentary on the content, and has been an all-around good guy to work with. Thank you, Andy!
My wife Lia has long suspected my sanity. When I told her I wanted to write another book, I am certain her suspicions were immediately confirmed. The look on her face struck me as how one might look after having been slapped suddenly with a dead fish.
Her entirely reasonable reservations aside, she has never once complained about all the time writing has taken from her and our three children, or all the house chores that have gone ignored while I’ve been holed up in my office beavering away.
In the 21 years we’ve been together she’s put up with a lot from me. Crazy business ideas. Crazy book ideas. Crazy parenting ideas. You name it and she’s had to deal with it.
My darling, it is to you that I am most grateful. Not for putting up with all my craziness, but for seeing something in me worth putting up with. I love you in a way that words could never reflect and give thanks every day to the Big Editor in the Sky that I have you in my life.
Finally, I strongly encourage you, the reader, to send me comments, good and bad. I have endeavored to create something you will enjoy and profit from, but I have no doubt made errors in both fact and style.
You can reach me at dave@rensin.com and I hope you will not be bashful in doing so.
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