Ubuntu is an exciting platform. You can literally find it everywhere—desktops, laptops, phones, and especially servers. The server edition enables administrators to create efficient, flexible, and highly available servers that empower organizations with the power of open source. As Ubuntu administrators, we're in a good company—according to W3Techs, Ubuntu is the most widely deployed distribution on the web with regard to Linux. With the release of Ubuntu 18.04, this platform becomes even more exciting!

In this book, we will dive right into Ubuntu Server, and you will learn all the concepts needed to manage your servers and configure them to perform all kinds of neat tasks, such as serving web pages, managing virtual machines, running containers, automating configuration, and sharing data with other users.

We'll start our journey right in the first chapter, where we'll walk through the installation of Ubuntu Server 18.04, which will serve as the foundation for the rest of the book. As we proceed through our journey, we'll look at managing users, connecting to networks, and controlling processes. Later, we'll implement important technologies, such as DHCP, DNS, Apache, MariaDB, and more. We'll even set up our own Nextcloud server along the way.

Finally, the end of the book covers various things we can do to troubleshoot issues, as well as preventing and recovering from disasters.