Get started with "OpenStack Bootcamp"

There are a lot of ways to jump start your OpenStack knowledge. A recent book called “OpenStack Bootcamp” bills itself as a focused and systematic introduction, using practical examples and hands-on problems. And despite the name, the author says it’s a “gentle introduction” to OpenStack.

Superuser talked to author Vinoth Kumar Selvaraj, a cloud engineer at CloudEnablers, about “basic training” metaphor and what’s on his OpenStack bookshelf at the moment. (Check out his Superuser tutorials, too!)The 302-page book is available from Packt Publishing in eBook as well as hardcover formats.

Who will this book help most?

Beginners!

Yes! I assume the readers are completely new to the cloud world who is looking for intensive knowledge of OpenStack without wasting time to learn ABC on day 1 and XYZ on day 2. This book is designed for the beginners who want to jump right into the practical knowledge, exercises, and solving the basic problems encountered during the deployment, in order to get up to speed with the latest release of OpenStack.

How did you get the idea for this book? (and why the “boot camp” analogy?)

I firmly believe that a hands-on experience with OpenStack will help the beginners to understand OpenStack design a lot better than just reading through the details.

This book will be more on filling in the practical learning gaps and this learn-by-doing approach gave it the title. I focused more on hands-on exercises for readers instead of starting with the history and evolution of OpenStack.

What are some of the most common problems new people to OpenStack have?

I think that the major problem for beginners is being overwhelmed by all the available functionality in OpenStack and not starting with something simple by focusing on core projects of OpenStack first. Users should be confident enough in operating the base components efficiently before they start picking up the bells and whistles of OpenStack.

People should also see the OpenStack from the architectural perspective and understand how the basic components interact.

Knowledge of the underlying architectural design is extremely useful in keeping your OpenStack infrastructure running. I could see that learning how all of the interoperability works is still a gap for beginners. I hope to bridge that gap with my book.

Why is a book helpful now — in addition to IRC, mailing lists, documentation, video tutorials etc.?

Yes! there are a lot of ways people can get to know OpenStack today. I think the volume of information out there on OpenStack, while certainly comprehensive, can be a little difficult for the newbie to start with.

As I said earlier, the book “OpenStack Bootcamp” is for beginners. I firmly believe my book would be a gentle starting point which would give them a good start to go and get further information from the resources you have mentioned.

What are some of the most exciting things you’ve seen recently in terms of OpenStack developments?

I observed that the uptake of OpenStack in containerization, NFV and the private cloud use cases are interesting at this time.

What’s on your OpenStack bookshelf?

Looking at my bookshelf now I could see,

1) “OpenStack Cloud Security”

2) “Learning OpenStack High Availability”

3) “OpenStack Essentials – Second Edition”

4) “Containers in OpenStack”

(Full disclosure, I was the technical reviewer for these books) 🙂

If you want to fill out your shelf more, remember that the OpenStack Marketplace — your one-stop shop for training, distros, private-cloud-as-a-service and more — offers a selection of technical publications, too. The listings are not affiliate links, but offered as a way to highlight the efforts of community members.

Under the “books” heading, you’ll find titles by Stackers including “Mastering OpenStack,” “OpenStack Networking Essentials,” and “OpenStack: Building a Cloud Environment.”

Tags: book