Modern System Administration

Chapter 2. Computing Environments

Let’s dig deeper into the fundamentals of reasoning about your system, starting with your computing environment.

This chapter examines the fundamental building block of the system: compute. Compute is the generic term used to encompass an instance that has a set of resources (i.e., processing power, memory, storage, and networking) associated with it. Contemporary computing is not just about the technical implementation of a system; it’s also about enabling methods of collaboration when building, configuring, and deploying the compute that your organization needs. In this chapter, we’ll explore the ways to distinguish the types and environments of compute infrastructure so you can customize your choices to your organization’s or team’s needs and technology.

Common Workloads

Workloads are characterized by the amount and type of pressure on resources that an application puts on a system.

The systems you manage will have a number of applications or services to install, maintain, and run in production environments. Each of the applications or services you manage will have a minimal and recommended set of compute requirements (CPU, memory, and storage) that inform the categorization of your application: CPU-bound, memory-bound, and storage-bound.

Note

I will share more about storage and networks in Chapters 3 and 4, respectively.

CPU-bound applications benefit from high-performance processors. Example workloads include the following:

• Batch processing ...