Book Image

Mastering Ubuntu Server - Second Edition

By : Jay LaCroix
Book Image

Mastering Ubuntu Server - Second Edition

By: Jay LaCroix

Overview of this book

Ubuntu Server has taken the data centers by storm. Whether you're deploying Ubuntu for a large-scale project or for a small office, it is a stable, customizable, and powerful Linux distribution that leads the way with innovative and cutting-edge features. For both simple and complex server deployments, Ubuntu's flexible nature can be easily adapted to meet to the needs of your organization. With this book as your guide, you will learn all about Ubuntu Server, from initial deployment to creating production-ready resources for your network. The book begins with the concept of user management, group management, and filesystem permissions. Continuing into managing storage volumes, you will learn how to format storage devices, utilize logical volume management, and monitor disk usage. Later, you will learn how to virtualize hosts and applications, which will cover setting up KVM/QEMU, as well as containerization with both Docker and LXD. As the book continues, you will learn how to automate configuration with Ansible, as well as take a look at writing scripts. Lastly, you will explore best practices and troubleshooting techniques when working with Ubuntu Server that are applicable to real-world scenarios. By the end of the book, you will be an expert Ubuntu Server administrator who is well-versed in its advanced concepts.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)

File server considerations

There are two common technologies you can utilize to share files with your users, Samba and NFS. In fact, there's nothing stopping you from hosting both Samba and NFS shares on a single server. However, each of the two popular solutions is valid for particular use cases. Before we get started with setting up our file server, we should first understand the differences between Samba and NFS, so we can make an informed decision as to which one is more appropriate for our environment. As a general rule of thumb, Samba is great for mixed environments (where you have Windows as well as Linux clients), and NFS is more appropriate for use in Linux or UNIX environments, but there's a bit more to it than that.

Samba is a great solution for many environments, because it allows you to share files with Windows, Linux, and macOS machines. Basically, pretty...