IT infrastructure has been the foundation for successful application deployments for many decades. However, general and up-to-date infrastructure knowledge is not widespread. Experience shows that software developers, system administrators, and project managers often have little understanding of the major impact that IT infrastructure has on the performance, availability, and security of software applications. This book explains the concepts, history, and implementation of IT infrastructure. Although there are many books on each of the infrastructure building blocks, this is the first book to describe them all: datacenters, servers, networks, storage, operating systems, and end-user devices. The building blocks described in this book provide functionality, but they also provide the non-functional attributes of performance, availability, and security. These attributes are discussed at a conceptual level in separate chapters and in more detail in the chapters on each building block. Whether you need an introduction to infrastructure technologies, a refresher course, or a study guide for a computer science class, you will find that the building blocks and concepts presented provide a solid foundation for understanding the complexities of today's IT infrastructures. This book can be used as a course book - it is used by a number of universities worldwide as part of their IT architecture courses based on the IS 2020.3 curriculum.
