Instant Debian: Build a Web Server

Build strong foundations for your future-ready web application using the universal operating system, Debian

Overview

• Learn something new in an Instant! A short, fast, focused guide delivering immediate results
• Build strong foundations for your Web application using Debian
• Deploy essential hardening and backup/restore strategies
• Gain knowledge for configuring servers, libraries and frameworks

In Detail

Debian is one of the most popular Linux-based operating systems, with over 37 thousand software packages available in several architectures. This universal operating system provides the foundation for thousands of web servers. It is easy to install, stable and provides mechanisms for system security.

Starting with an insightful discussion on the architectures and methods of installing Debian, we’ll also discuss cues to plan ahead for scalability. We’ll then explore how to configure and use APT to install necessary software, taking you all the way through to presenting scenarios for security, backup/restore and maintenance.

Debian: Build a Web Server How-To will help you effectively setup and deploy a Debian-based Web server with strong foundations for the future of your Web application. It teaches concepts such as library and framework availability and suitability under the APT system, how to read and process logs and events and how to respond to security incidents. Additionally it also covers planning and executing a backup and restore strategy and how to deploy clusters and proxies.

The book will help you navigate installation methods, understand how to configure APT and how to use it to deploy the application parts and how to tackle common management scenarios, ending up with a ready-to-go Web server running Debian.

What you will learn from this book

• Choose an installation method based on architecture, hardware and volume needs
• Configure APT and learn what to expect during updates and upgrades
• Install your programming languages, libraries and frameworks, as well as databases
• Configure storage, harden your server and prepare a backup strategy
• Deploy scalable architectures with proxies and clusters, as well as The Cloud

Approach

Filled with practical, step-by-step instructions and clear explanations for the most important and useful tasks. A concise guide full of step-by-step recipes to teach you how to install and configure a Debian web server.

Who this book is written for

This is an ideal book if you are an administrator on a Development Operations team or infrastructure management, who is passionate about Linux and their Web applications but have no previous experience with Debian or APT-based systems.

Jose Miguel Parrella

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 Linuxbased 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.