Ubuntu System Administration

Day 1: Core System Operations & Network Architecture

Module 1: The Ubuntu Ecosystem

  • Distro Architecture & Genealogy (Differences between Debian upstream, RHEL, and Ubuntu LTS cycles).
  • Platform Value Proposition (Key advantages, enterprise support model, Snap vs. Apt).
  • Editions and Flavors (Server, Desktop, Core, and cloud-specific kernels).

Module 2: Installation and Initial Access

  • Pre-flight Checks (Hardware sizing, storage requirements, compatibility).
  • Deployment Strategies (Manual installer, automated installations via Autoinstall/Preseed, advanced partitioning).
  • Command Line Proficiency (Essential Bash operations, piping, and stream redirection).
  • Cloud Operations (Deploying and initializing Ubuntu Cloud Images on public/private clouds).

Module 3: Network Configuration Stack

  • Connectivity Fundamentals (TCP/IP addressing, subnetting refresher).
  • Interface Management (Predictable Network Interface Names, identifying physical ports).
  • Addressing and Routing (Static IP assignment, Gateway configuration, Netplan vs. ifupdown).
  • Name Resolution (Configuring /etc/hosts and systemd-resolved).
  • Advanced Networking (Bridging interfaces for virtualization, bonding/teaming concepts).

Day 2: Security, Virtualization & Containerization

Module 4: Hardening and Access Control

  • Privilege Management (Sudoers configuration, user groups, file permissions).
  • Mandatory Access Control (Enforcing security profiles with AppArmor).
  • Network Defense (Firewall strategies using UFW wrapper and low-level iptables/nftables).
  • Public Key Infrastructure (Generating Self-Signed certificates, managing CA trust stores).
  • Centralized Authentication (Integration with directory services: LDAP and Samba AD integration).

Module 5: Virtualization Infrastructure

  • The KVM Hypervisor (Enabling hardware virtualization, interacting with libvirt/virsh).
  • Orchestration Overview (Managing the virtualization stack via OpenStack components).
  • Rapid VM Deployment (Using multipass for developer instances, uvt tools, and virt-install).

Module 6: System Containers (LXD)

  • LXD/LXC Architecture (Differences between application containers like Docker and system containers).
  • Lifecycle Management (Creating, launching, stopping, and destroying containers).
  • Resource Control (Applying hardware profiles, disk limits, and network policies).
  • Image Operations (Publishing snapshots, importing/exporting images across hosts).

Day 3: Service Deployment, Reliability & Maintenance

Module 7: High Availability & Operations

  • Reliability Engineering (Concepts of HA Clustering, failover strategies).
  • Observability (Monitoring system load, resource usage, and service status).
  • Disaster Recovery (Backup methodologies, restoring system state and data).

Module 8: Communication Services

  • Email Storage & Retrieval (Configuring Dovecot for IMAP/POP3 protocols).
  • Mail Transfer Agents (SMTP configuration with Postfix and Exim4, relay setup).
  • Web Infrastructure (Deploying Apache HTTPD, virtual hosts configuration).
  • Traffic Optimization (Setting up Squid as a caching proxy or forward proxy).

Module 9: The Application Stack

  • Database Administration (Installation and initialization of MySQL/MariaDB).
  • Scripting & Runtimes (Environment setup for PHP, Perl, and Python scripting).
  • Application Frameworks (Deploying the Ruby on Rails stack).