Modern System Administration

Chapter 4. Network

Let’s round out the fundamentals of systems by talking about the network. Networks are the communication bedrock of every system; they connect all your resources and services. Problems with the network lead to system failure. The critical nature of networks led to early specialization and networking admins to manage the networking hardware. Microservices, virtualization, and containerization have brought a tectonic shift to building and managing today’s networks. More resources to interconnect, software-defined networking, and latency-dependent applications have all upset prior expectations of network admin skills, bringing some of these administration responsibilities back into scope for the systems team.

In this chapter, I explain the landscape of networking technologies (network virtualization, software-defined networks, and content distribution networks) so you can collaborate with your network and network security teams and build the skills to strengthen the interconnection of your system’s components.

Caring About Networks

Let’s revisit the example from the previous chapter of a contemporary product website; it’s the virtual front door of a business and an example system you might manage.

A user opens up a web browser on their phone to buy a product from your company. Their wireless service provider routes their request to a CDN that operates in a data center physically close to them. If the CDN doesn’t have the data to fulfill the request, their request ...