To get the most out of this book

In this book, we'll base most of our examples and builds on a default installation of Ubuntu Linux. You can certainly install Ubuntu on "bare metal" hardware, but you may find that using a virtualization solution such as VMware (Workstation or ESXi), VirtualBox, or Proxmox can really benefit your learning experience (all of these except for VMware Workstation are free). Using virtualization options, you can take "snapshots" of your host at known good points along the way, which means that if you clobber something while experimenting with a tool or feature, it is very easy to just roll back that change and try it again.

Also, using virtualization allows you to make multiple copies of your host so that you can implement features or services in a logical way, rather than trying to put all the services we discuss in this book on the same host.

We use several Linux services in this book, mostly implemented on Ubuntu Linux version 20 (or newer). These services are summarized here:

In addition, we use or discuss several "add-on" Linux tools that you might not be familiar with:

Most of the tools and services referenced can all be installed on a single Linux host as the book progresses. This works well for a lab setup, but in a real network you will of course split important servers across different hosts.

Some tools we explore as part of a pre-built or pre-packaged distribution. In these cases, you can certainly install this same distribution in your hypervisor, but you can also certainly follow along in that chapter to get a good appreciation for the concepts, approaches, and pitfalls as they are illustrated.