5 Must Read Books About Cloud Technologies in September 2020

Learning new technologies is a challenge. Especially when it comes to rapidly altering cloud technologies.  

There are different ways for learning new skills, developing your expertise, and expanding your knowledge, such as:

• Attending conferences
• Screencasts
• Enrolling online training courses
• Taking certification exams

just to name a few.

And there is a traditional way not out of style:

Reading books 

You would ask yourself – why books when I have access to the internet? The good thing about learning from books is – you focus your concentration on one topic. No disturbing emails, no messages distracting you (in case you muted your cell phone) – no Reddit or other platforms that lead away your attention. 

Now that autumn is around the corner, it is the perfect time to choose a good book and plunge into a new topic of your interest or gain deeper knowledge about technologies you already started working with.

Photo by energepic.com from Pexels

To give you a quick start, we selected 5 books about cloud technologies. Here is the brief list:

1. Cloud Native: Using Containers, Functions, and Data to Build Next-Generation Applications 
2. Learning DevOps: The complete guide to accelerate collaboration with Jenkins, Kubernetes, Terraform and Azure DevOps
3. Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design
4. Cloud Foundry for Developers
5. The Kubernetes Book

Continue reading for more details about these books.

Table of Contents

• Cloud Native 
• Learning DevOps
• Refactoring Databases 
• Cloud Foundry for Developers 
• The Kubernetes Book

Cloud Native 

Using Containers, Functions, and Data to Build Next-Generation Applications

Authors: Boris Scholl, Trent Swanson, Peter Jausovec

Publisher: O’Reilly

Abstract

Developers often struggle when first encountering the cloud. Learning about distributed systems, becoming familiar with technologies such as containers and functions, and knowing how to put everything together can be daunting. With this practical guide, you’ll get up to speed on patterns for building cloud native applications and best practices for common tasks such as messaging, eventing, and DevOps.

Learning DevOps

The complete guide to accelerate collaboration with Jenkins, Kubernetes, Terraform and Azure DevOps

Author: Mikael Krief

Publisher: Packt Publishing

Abstract

The implementation of DevOps processes requires the efficient use of various tools, and the choice of these tools is crucial for the sustainability of projects and collaboration between development (Dev) and operations (Ops). 

This book presents the different patterns and tools that you can use to provision and configure an infrastructure in the cloud. You’ll begin by understanding DevOps culture, the application of DevOps in cloud infrastructure, provisioning with Terraform, configuration with Ansible, and image building with Packer. You’ll then be taken through source code versioning with Git and the construction of a DevOps CI/CD pipeline using Jenkins, GitLab CI, and Azure Pipelines. This DevOps handbook will also guide you in containerizing and deploying your applications with Docker and Kubernetes. You’ll learn how to reduce deployment downtime with blue-green deployment and the feature flags technique, and study DevOps practices for open source projects. Finally, you’ll grasp some best practices for reducing the overall application lead time to ensure faster time to market.

Refactoring Databases 

Evolutionary Database Design

Authors: Scott J Ambler , Pramod J. Sadalage

Publisher: Pearson Education Inc.

Abstract 

Refactoring has proven its value in a wide range of development projects–helping software professionals improve system designs, maintainability, extensibility, and performance. Now, for the first time, leading agile methodologist Scott Ambler and renowned consultant Pramodkumar Sadalage introduce powerful refactoring techniques specifically designed for database systems. 

Ambler and Sadalage demonstrate how small changes to table structures, data, stored procedures, and triggers can significantly enhance virtually any database design–without changing semantics. You’ll learn how to evolve database schemas in step with source code–and become far more effective in projects relying on iterative, agile methodologies. 

This comprehensive guide and reference helps you overcome the practical obstacles to refactoring real-world databases by covering every fundamental concept underlying database refactoring. Using start-to-finish examples, the authors walk you through refactoring simple standalone database applications as well as sophisticated multi-application scenarios. You’ll master every task involved in refactoring database schemas, and discover best practices for deploying refactorings in even the most complex production environments.

Cloud Foundry for Developers 

Deploy, manage, and orchestrate cloud-native applications with ease

Authors: Rick Farmer, Rahul Jain, David Wu

Publisher: Packt Publishing

Abstract

Cloud Foundry is the open source platform to deploy, run, and scale applications.

This book takes readers on a journey where they will first learn the Cloud Foundry basics, including how to deploy and scale a simple application in seconds. Readers will build their knowledge of how to create highly scalable and resilient cloud-native applications and microservices running on Cloud Foundry. Readers will learn how to integrate their application with services provided by Cloud Foundry and with those external to Cloud Foundry. Readers will learn how to structure their Cloud Foundry environment with orgs and spaces. After that, we’ll discuss aspects of continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), monitoring and logging. Readers will also learn how to enable health checks, troubleshoot and debug applications. 

By the end of this book, readers will have hands-on experience in performing various deployment and scaling tasks. Additionally, they will have an understanding of what it takes to migrate and develop applications for Cloud Foundry.

The Kubernetes Book

Author: Nigel Poulton & Pushkar Joglekar

Publisher: Independently published 

Abstract

Containers have revolutionized the way we package and run applications. However, like most things, containers come with their own set of challenges. This is where Kubernetes enters the scene. 

Kubernetes helps you deploy and manage containerized applications at scale. It also abstracts the underlying infrastructure so that you don’t need to care if you’re deploying applications to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or your own on-premises datacenter. With Kubernetes, you can develop applications on your laptop, deploy to your favourite cloud platform, migrate to a different cloud platform, and even migrate to your private cloud at your on-premises datacenter.

The Kubernetes Book starts from the beginning, explains all concepts in a clear and friendly manner, and covers everything needed for you to become proficient at Kubernetes. It even includes two chapters dedicated to threat-modeling Kubernetes and real-world security.

Your opinion is needed. You have already read one of these books and want to recommend it? You have another book about cloud technologies that you absolutely want to see in one of the next lists?

Then leave us a comment. 

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