Linux Administration Cookbook

Automatic provisioning

In the prelude I suggested that we would touch on this, and it is definitely worth discussing.

Once, it was the case that physical machines roamed the earth, preying on unsuspecting sysadmins that dared to enter their swamps and server cages.

Nowadays, servers still exist, but they have been given a more tech-unfriendly and media-savvy name, becoming colloquially known as the cloud, and being made transparent enough that sysadmins no longer know whether their favorite hipster distribution is running on a Dell, HPE, or IBM machine.

This has given rise to transient servers, or servers that periodically cease to exist in the evening, only to be born anew the next morning.

Aside from giving you an existential crisis about ...