Parrella - Instant Debian - build a web server: build strong foundations for your future-ready web application using the universal operating system, Debian

Jose Miguel Parrella has been involved in the world of open source since he was 14, during his freshman year at college. In Venezuela, he's worked for the Intellectual Property Office, the National Electric Corporation, and other government entities, leading several Linux-based projects.

He was the CTO of an open source consulting firm in Venezuela and Ecuador, helping to grow the business and developing a strong team that delivered dozens of successful Linux projects, including the architecture, development, and release of Canaima National GNU/Linux 2.0 distribution of Venezuela used in over two million netbooks. He is currently on an assignment as an open source Specialist for a large IT company in the United States.

Since 2005, Jose Miguel has been involved in the Debian Project, speaking at several DebConfs, and became a Debian Developer in 2007. He uploaded Nginx 0.4 on the Debian archive in 2006.

In addition to workshops and keynotes delivered across the globe and publications, such as the Rapid Distribution Deployment whitepaper, Jose Miguel has been a technical reviewer for two Packt Publishing books on Nginx and is currently working on other titles related to open source software.

His opinions in this book or elsewhere don't necessarily represent the views of his past or present employers and/or the Debian Project.

I would like to thank my wife, Ail, for her leadership, professionalism, and support in my life. You rock! And I would also like to thank all the Debian Project volunteers for their hard and high-quality work, as well as the managers and partners who have provided me with learning opportunities in the past. Thank you all.

Gunnar Wolf has been a Free Software enthusiast and promoter for over 15 years, choosing GNU/Linux for his production servers as early as 1996. Computer administration and security has always been one of his main topics of interest and research.

In the early 2000s, he founded the National Conference on Free Software (CONSOL), which helped consolidate the Mexican Free Software communities, and led its work for several years. In 2003, he became a Debian Developer and has been an organizer for the yearly Debian Conference since 2005.

In 2005, he started working at the Economics Research Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (IIEc-UNAM) as a systems and network administrator, and a Web applications programmer. All of the systems he administers run Debian. He teaches the course on Operating Systems at the Engineering Faculty of the same university.

He has taken the topic of Free Software as a personal passion, as a particular expression of a much wider movement, Free Culture. He has also participated as a coordinator and co-author for the book Construccin Colaborativa del Conocimiento (IIEc-UNAM, 2011).

His recent thoughts and experiences in life are often portrayed in his personal blog, http://gwolf.org/.

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Preface

APT, one of the technologies that made Debian (and its derivatives, such as Ubuntu) highly popular, became mainstream for production deployments during the same time span that web applications broke through the barriers of enterprise fitness, reliability, and scalability.

The flexibility of Debian systems makes it very appealing for web DevOps and modern web apps. This book tries to simplify deployment and reduce time-to-market, while providing a solid foundation for you to grow your Debian sysadmin practices.

What this book covers

In the first part of the book well help you choose the right flavor of Debian, install it, and prepare for multiple and massive installations, should you need it. We will also guide you through the initial APT setup, installing the stack, and configuring storage and frameworks.

In the second part of the book, we harden the installation, analyze scalability paths, and learn how to effectively maintain your system, including backup/restore and performance. We also provide a future look at cloud and incident response, which will help you get the most out of your installation in the long run.

Choosing the right flavor of Debian (Simple) explains how Debian organizes software, the architectures, and installation methods, and indicates a set of criteria for system administrators to choose and get the right media.