To get the most out of this book

You will need to have some programming experience, but not necessarily with Go. A basic understanding of command-line tools for any of the supported operating systems will be required. It will also be helpful to have some DevOps experience.

If you are using the digital version of this book, we advise you to type the code yourself or access the code from the book's GitHub repository (a link is available in the next section). Doing so will help you avoid any potential errors related to the copying and pasting of code.

This book heavily relies on Docker and Docker Compose to allow you to set up cluster configurations that work natively on Linux. It is possible to use Windows for this book using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), but the authors have not tested this. Additionally, many of the exercises may be done on other operating systems that are POSIX GNU compliant. The Chapter 12, Creating Immutable Infrastructure Using Packer, requires an AWS account running Linux virtual machines and the Chapter 13, Infrastructure as Code with Terraform, and Chapter 15, Programming the Cloud, require an Azure account.