For many decades, IT infrastructure has provided the foundation for successful application deployments. Yet, general knowledge of infrastructures is not widespread. Experience shows that software developers, system administrators, and project managers usually have little knowledge of the large influence IT infrastructures have on the performance, availability and security of software applications. This book explains the concepts, history, and implementation of a robust and balanced IT infrastructure. Although many of books can be found on individual infrastructure building blocks, this is the first book to describe all of them: datacenters, servers, networks, storage, virtualization, operating systems, and end user devices. Whether you need an introduction to infrastructure technologies, a refresher course, or a study guide for a computer science class, you will find that the presented building blocks and concepts provide a solid foundation for understanding the complexity of today’s IT infrastructures.

For many decades, IT infrastructure has provided the foundation for successful application deployments. Yet, general knowledge of infrastructures is not widespread. Experience shows that software developers, system administrators, and project managers usually have little knowledge of the large influence IT infrastructures have on the performance, availability and security of software applications. This book explains the concepts, history, and implementation of a robust and balanced IT infrastructure. Although many of books can be found on individual infrastructure building blocks, this is the first book to describe all of them: datacenters, servers, networks, storage, virtualization, operating systems, and end user devices. Whether you need an introduction to infrastructure technologies, a refresher course, or a study guide for a computer science class, you will find that the presented building blocks and concepts provide a solid foundation for understanding the complexity of today’s IT infrastructures.