To get the most out of this book

While a simple reading of the book will impart the different architectural and cloud concepts to the reader, in order to follow along, ensure that you have the following:

• An internet connection to download the software.
• A Ubuntu 16.04 machine to act as the management system.
• A fully functioning OpenStack deployment or a Ubuntu 16.04 machine to run DevStack.
• AWS user account—if you don't have the user account, ensure that you have your credit card ready in order to open a free account. (Remember that while we have taken care to use the free-tier systems in AWS, make sure you use the appropriate instance sizes and AMI IDs if you are creating the environment in a different region).