Obtaining installation media
It's time to get started! If you've decided to utilize a physical server, desktop, laptop, or VM as your test server, then you'll need to go through the installation process to set up Ubuntu. Don't worry—it's very easy to do and is made even easier in Ubuntu 20.04 as there are fewer overall steps in the process. If you've instead opted to use a VPS or Raspberry Pi, you won't need to go through this process, as VPS providers do this for you and Raspberry Pi has a different setup method altogether (we'll cover this later in the chapter, in the Installing Ubuntu on a Raspberry Pi section).
Assuming that you've decided to use a device that does require going through the installer, we'll need to download Ubuntu Server and then create bootable installation media to install it. How you do this largely depends on your hardware. Does your device have an optical drive? Is it able to boot from USB? Refer to the documentation for your device to find out.
It's recommended to utilize a flash drive for the installation if you can, preferably one that uses USB 3.0 or higher since you'd benefit from its faster speed compared to USB 2.0. The reason for the preference toward using a flash drive is due to the fact that they are typically faster than a DVD.
However, if your device is older, you won't have a choice, as legacy devices were not able to boot from USB at all. As a general rule, use a flash drive if you can and opt for a DVD only if you have no choice.
In the past, Ubuntu Server ISO images could be used to create either a bootable CD or DVD. Nowadays, writable CDs don't have enough space to support the download size. Therefore, if you choose to burn bootable optical media, you'll need a writable DVD at a minimum.
Unfortunately, the differing age of servers within a typical data center introduces some unpredictability when it comes to how to boot installation media. When I first started with servers, it was commonplace for all standard rack servers to contain a 3.5-inch floppy disk drive, and some of the better ones even contained an optical drive. Nowadays, servers typically contain neither. If a server does have an optical drive, it could potentially go unused for an extended period of time and become faulty without anyone knowing until the next time someone goes to use it. Some servers boot from USB, others don't. To continue, check the documentation for your hardware and plan accordingly. Your server's capabilities will determine which kind of media you'll need to create.
Regardless of whether we plan on creating a bootable USB or DVD, we only need to download a single file. Navigate to the following site in your web browser to get started: https://www.ubuntu.com/download/server.
From this page, we're going to download Ubuntu 20.04 LTS by clicking on the Download button:
Figure 1.1: Ubuntu Server 20.04.1 download page
There may be other versions of Ubuntu Server listed on this page, such as 20.10 and 21.04, depending on when you're reading this. New releases of Ubuntu are published every six months. However, this book only covers the Long Term Support (LTS) release, due to the fact that it benefits from five years of support (non-LTS versions are only supported for nine months).
Organizations don't typically utilize non-LTS releases at all, except for testing upcoming features prior to general availability, so for our purposes, we'll stick with the LTS version. Once the download is completed, we'll end up with an ISO image we can use to create our bootable installation media.
If you're setting up a VM, then the ISO file you download from the Ubuntu downloads page will be all you need; you won't need to create a bootable DVD or flash drive. In that scenario, all you should need to do is create a VM, attach the ISO to the virtual optical drive, and boot it. From there, the installer should start, and you can proceed with the installation procedure outlined later in this chapter, in the Installing Ubuntu Server section. Going over the process of booting an ISO image on a VM differs from one virtualization solution to another, so detailing the process on each would be beyond the scope of this book. Thankfully, the process is usually straightforward and you can find the details within the documentation of your hypervisor or from performing a quick Google search. In most cases, the process is as simple as attaching the downloaded ISO image to the VM and then starting it up.
If your device does not support booting from USB and you find yourself needing to create a bootable DVD, the process is typically just a matter of downloading the ISO file and then right-clicking on it. In the right-click menu of your operating system, you should have an option to burn to disk or some similar verbiage. This is true of Windows, as well as most graphical desktop environments of Linux where a disk-burning application is installed.
The exact procedure differs from system to system, mainly because there is a vast amount of software combinations at play here. For example, I've seen many Windows systems where the right-click option to burn a DVD was removed by an installed CD/DVD-burning application. In that case, you'd have to first open your CD/DVD-burning application and find the option to create media from a downloaded ISO file. As much as I would love to outline the complete process here, no two Windows PCs typically ship with the same CD/DVD-burning application. The best rule of thumb is to try right-clicking on the file to see whether the option is there, and, if not, refer to the documentation for your application. Keep in mind that a data disk is not what you want, so make sure to look for the option to create media from an ISO image or your disk will be useless.
At this point, you should have an Ubuntu Server ISO image file downloaded. If you are planning on using a DVD to install Ubuntu, you should have that created as well. In the next section, I'll outline the process of creating a bootable flash drive that can be used to install Ubuntu Server.
