My Book

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.   . . The book's previous edition was rewarded

The 4th edition of my book on Infrastructure Architecture called "Infrastructure Architecture - Infrastructure Building Blocks and Concepts" is published.

Download the Table of Contents.

A preview of the book can be downloaded here.

 

How to order

Paperback (480 pages) - ISBN 978-1-4477-8560-6

• From my publisher Lulu.com the book can be ordered here.
• On Amazon the book can be ordered here. 

eBook - ISBN 978-1-4477-8093-9

• From Amazon.com the book can be ordered as a Kindle ebook.
• From the Apple bookstore (for Mac or iOS devices, like the iPad) - search for Sjaak Laan in the Books app on your device.
• The ebook is also available on the Kobo bookstore.

 

Abstract

IT infrastructure has been the foundation for successful application deployments for many decades. However, general and up-to-date infrastructure knowledge is not widespread. Experience shows that software developers, system administrators, and project managers often have little understanding of the major impact that IT infrastructure has on the performance, availability, and security of software applications.

This book explains the concepts, history, and implementation of IT infrastructure. Although there are many books on each of the infrastructure building blocks, this is the first book to describe them all: datacenters, servers, networks, storage, operating systems, and end-user devices.

The building blocks described in this book provide functionality, but they also provide the non-functional attributes of performance, availability, and security. These attributes are discussed at a conceptual level in separate chapters and in more detail in the chapters on each building block.

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 building blocks and concepts presented provide a solid foundation for understanding the complexities of today's IT infrastructures.

This book can be used as a course book - it is used by a number of universities worldwide as part of their IT courses based on the IS 2020.3 curriculum.

 

Note to the 4th Edition

In the fourth edition of this book, a number of corrections have been made, some terminology has been clarified, and several typographical and syntax errors have been corrected. In addition, the following changes have been made:

• The content has been updated to reflect the new Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) IS 2020.3 Curriculum - Competency Area - IT Infrastructure.
• A new chapter on cloud computing has been added, and cloud-related content has been added throughout the rest of the book.
• A new chapter on documenting infrastructures was added.
• New technologies such as serverless computing, edge computing and quantum computing have been added.
• The security chapter has been rewritten and restructured to better reflect infrastructure-related security concerns.
• The Infrastructure as Code chapter has been rewritten to reflect current working practices and a chapter on automation has been added as this has become more important over the years.
• The chapter on Purchasing Infrastructure and Services has been removed as it was too general and not specific to infrastructure. The chapter was mandatory for the IS 2010.4 syllabus, but has been removed from the IS 2020.3 syllabus.
• The networking chapter has been expanded to include POP, SMTP, FTP, HTTP, and HTTPS protocols. This is a requirement from the IS 2020.3 syllabus.
• An appendix has been added that describes a high-level checklist that can be used to ask the right questions when learning about an existing infrastructure in the field.
• More than 100 edits were made throughout the book to clarify and update content, and to remove outdated content.
• Finally, as technology has advanced in recent years, the book has been updated to include the most current information.

  

Course Material 

The book is used in a number of universities in the USA, Australia, Chile, and Kuwait, as study material for their IT infrastructure courses. The book is especially suited for courses based on the IS 2020.3 curriculum. A reference matrix of the IS 2020.3 curriculum topics (as used in many universities in the USA) and the relevant sections in this book is provided in the appendix.

Based on requests from university professors, I created a set of course materials. It contains all pictures used in the book in both Visio and high-resolution PNG format, the list of abbreviations, a PowerPoint slide deck for each chapter (> 700 slides in total), and a set of test questions per chapter (> 200 questions in total). 

The course materials can be downloaded here.

Please read the course setup in the Excel sheet "Course setup".

There is a set of multiple choice questions available for professors / lecturers. Please contact the author (sjaak.laan@gmail.com) with your name, position and university name to request a copy. 

This entry was posted on Maandag 03 April 2023