Getting Started with Linux Containers

If you want to be a system administrator or software developer, practical knowledge of Linux containers (LXC) is mandatory. Containers will allow you to safely test and deploy new software, while keeping special required libraries or configuration files.

This course teaches you the basics of container technologies and LXC *quickly* -- that is, in an afternoon.

The regular edition of the guide includes PDF, epub, and mobi versions of the guide.

The BOFH edition includes downloadable HD versions of the original YouTube videos, for your offline viewing pleasure. Although the guide is more up-to-date and features lots of extra content, having the videos available is convenient (not to mention that it's a great way to support more free content on the YouTube channel).

Getting Started with Linux Containers will take you through the basics in a practical way. You'll learn all about:

• basic container usage
  
• privileged and unprivileged containers
  
• advanced container configuration
  
• container snapshotting and clones
  
• ephemeral containers
  
• deployment considerations

Besides a crash course on actually creating, configuring, working with, and managing Linux Containers, the guide also covers:

• Container security
  
• Background info about virtualization, containerization, and the differences between them (the source of popular interview questions for junior sysadmins)
  
• Basic container theory: kernel namespacing, control groups, and more (don't worry, it's less complicated than it sounds)
  
• A survey of many popular container technologies on Linux, BSD, Solaris, etc., so you'll be able to intelligently talk about them
  
• When to choose LXC vs other containerization technologies like Docker, FreeBSD jails, and others.
  
• How to set up and run unprivileged containers, allowing you to configure production containers that can survive a hack without compromising the machine they're running on.
  

This guide will save you many hours reading and experimentation in your free time. I wrote it to give you "all the basics" -- along with a bit of real-life advice and background theory -- in a nice little package (about 30 pages). You can read it, while working through the examples, in an afternoon.

It's like having me there for an afternoon, teaching you the basics that you'll need to know to work with LXC...except that it's much, much cheaper.

The guide also happens to be more up-to-date than other popular documentation out there, and will stay that way.

Once you grab a copy, you'll automatically get any updates I make to the guide, for free. For life.