What you need for this book

This book assumes that you are familiar with at least java programming language. Knowledge of core java and JEE is essential considering this book to gain better insight. Having a strong understanding of deployment of a web application in application server such as tomcat will help you to understand the flow quickly.

As application development lifecycle will cover lot of tools in general; it is essential to have some knowledge of repositories such as svn, git and so on. IDE tools such as Eclipse; build tools such as ant and maven. Knowledge of code analysis tools will make job easier in configuration and integration, however it is not extremely vital to perform exercises given in the book. Most of the configuration steps are mentioned clearly.

You will be walked through the steps required to install Jenkins 2, Chef Configuration Management tool. In order to be immediately successful, you will need administrative access to a host that runs a modern version of Linux; CentOS 6.x is what will be used for demonstration purposes. If you are a more experienced reader, then a recent release of almost any distribution will work just as well (but you may be required to do a little bit of extra work that is not outlined in the book). If you do not have access to a dedicated Linux host, a virtual host (or hosts) running inside of virtualization software such as VirtualBox or VMware workstation will work.

For AWS and Microsoft Azure, you can use the free trial and one-month free access respectively. Additionally, you will need access to the Internet to download plugins that you do not already have, as well as an installation of the Jenkins 2.