Summer is always a good time to catch up on some reading. The days are long and theoretically at least, a bit slower. And like most tech nerds, you'll want to spend that time expanding your IT know-how. Perhaps you want to build more expertise in a certain domain or expand your horizons and learn about a new area. In either case, we've got some books you'll want to check out.
Most of these tech books are hot off the press. A few have been out for a bit, but haven't lost their sheen and remain highly relevant. Many cover cutting-edge topics that were some of the hottest sessions at Interop Las Vegas this year, including network automation, DevOps, and containers. In fact, some the authors, such as network consultant Jason Edelman and eBay Network Software Engineer Matt Oswalt, were popular speakers at the conference.
With the rise of cloud and software-defined networking, IT roles are changing so it makes sense for infrastructure pros to get familiar with emerging technologies, hence our book choices. Who knows, perhaps one or more of these books will inspire you to take a different approach in your work, or a whole new path in your IT career.
Continue on to check out our selection for your reading pleasure this summer.
Network Programmability And Automation: Skills For The Next-Generation Network Engineer
By Jason Edelman, Scott S. Lowe, and Matt Oswalt
Network consultant Jason Edelman teamed with eBay Network Software Engineer Matt Oswalt and VMware Engineering Architect Scott Lowe on Network Programmability And Automation, which is available as an early release. It covers hot topics for network engineers, including Python, Linux, and how to use DevOps tools like Puppet for automating network devices – as Edelman wrote in a blog post, "all important skills for the next-gen network engineer."
Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems
By Betsy Beyer, Chris Jones, Niall Richard Murphy, and Jennifer Petoff
Hyper-scale web companies like Google and Facebook have become the envy of the enterprise for their innovative approaches to data center design and management. Written by members of Google's site reliability team, Site Reliability Engineering provides an inside look at how engineers at the search giant work to keep massive systems up and running. The book, a collection of articles, discusses the role of the site reliability engineer and best practices Google's engineers follow.
Architecting for Scale: High Availability for Your Growing Applications
By Lee Atchison
Architecting for Scale, written by Lee Atchison, principal cloud architect at New Relic, aims to help readers avoid outages by providing techniques for building resilient applications. It covers service-oriented architectures, including microservices, and how to develop robust designs for higher availability. Atchison has more than just a little experience in this area. Before New Relic, Atchison worked as a senior manager at Amazon, where he led the development of Amazon Web Services Elastic Beanstalk. This book is available as an early release.
Learn Python the Hard Way: A Very Simple Introduction to the Terrifying Beautiful World of Computers and Code
By Zed Shaw
With software playing a more prominent role in networking, many industry experts say programming will become an important skill for network engineers. They often recommend learning some Python, so here's a book to get you started if you haven't already learning the programming language. The third edition of Learn Python the Hard Way by Zed Shaw features exercises designed to teach you how to install a Python environment, organize and write code, and work with files. It covers strings and texts, looping and logic, debugging, testing, and more. The book is available for purchase with a DVD, and also can be accessed for free online.
Docker: Up & Running
By Karl Matthias and Sean P. Kane
Simply put, Docker is hot. The container technology burst on the scene just three years ago as an open-source project and has taken off like wildfire. This Docker book is designed as a practical guide that explains how to use Docker to package applications and manage containers in production. Karl Matthias, a principal systems engineer at Nitro Software, penned the book with Sean Kane, a lead site reliability engineer for the shared infrastructure team at New Relic.
Intercloud: Solving Interoperability and Communication in a Cloud of Clouds
By Jazib Frahim, Venkata Josyula, Monique Morrow, and Ken Owens
Published by Cisco Press and written by a team of Cisco experts, Intercloud is billed as a complete guide to the networking giant's Intercloud technology for integrating private, hybrid and public clouds. The authors cover the role of Intercloud federations, architecture models, customer management, security, cloud APIs, emerging standards, and more.
Effective DevOps: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Affinity, and Tooling at Scale
By Jennifer Davis and Katherine Daniels
As DevOps continues to gain steam in the enterprise, the trend is dogged by some misconceptions. With Effective DevOps, Jennifer Davis and Katherine Daniels aim to offer a practical perspective that counters the idea that DevOps requires hiring outside experts or buying a bunch of new tools. They explain how DevOps is a cultural movement and provide guidance for improving collaboration and increasing efficiency in your organization. At Chef, Davis develops Chef "cookbooks;" she's also is an organizer of devopsdays. Daniels is a senior operations engineer at Etsy.
Infrastructure as Code: Managing Servers in the Cloud
By Kief Morris
In Infrastructure as Code, Kief Morris discusses how practices and principles that grew out of the DevOps movement can be used to manage cloud infrastructure and rein in sprawl. Morris, who heads the European practice for continuous delivery and DevOps at software company ThoughtWorks, covers tools that provision and configure core infrastructure, services and tools for managing a dynamic environment, and practices for provisioning servers. His book is designed for system admins, infrastructure engineers and architects.
Practical IPv6 for Windows Administrators
By Edward Horley
Published in late 2013, Practical IPv6 for Windows Administrators has only become more relevant with the increasing urgency of IPv6 migrations after ARIN ran out of addresses in its free IPv4 pool last fall. Written by IPv6 expert and Interop speaker Edward Horley, the book covers IPv6 addressing, management of IPv6 from Powershell, and use of IPv6 in Hyper-V and virtual networking environments. It focuses on helping guide Windows admins through an IPv6 migration by focusing on dual-stack configurations.
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