Hey, everyone.
And welcome back.
Now, in today's video, we'll be looking into the lab setup for Nginx that we will be using throughout
this course.
So let's get started.
Now, in terms for the preferred choice of Nginx installation method we'll be using or we'll be creating
a new virtual machine and that virtual machine will be based on Linux.
And once you have the VM ready, then we'll go ahead and install the Nginx directly on top of it.
So just to revise the choices of the setup that we'll be using, the most important one is the operating
system.
So we will be using a red hat based OS based on version eight.
So you can either make use of a CentOS eight or you can either make use of a rocky Linux eight as well.
And in terms of cloud provider, we will be using Digitalocean.
But this is something that is optional.
You can use any cloud provider that you need or that you prefer.
Now the exact operating system that we will be using in this course would be Rocky Linux eight.
However, even if you're using CentOS eight, things should work perfectly well.
They are very similar altogether.
Now, for those who are wondering why we are making use of Rocky Linux, because this seems to be a
newer name.
The reason primarily because the primary support for CentOS eight CentOS is one of the most stable operating
system in terms of Linux.
However, the support for CentOS eight got reduced to December 2021.
So this was an unexpected move by Red Hat altogether.
So the stable alternative for the Red Hat is now rocky Linux.
In fact, Rocky Linux is led by the founder of the CentOS project himself.
So this is considered to be a very stable release, which is an alternative to that of CentOS eight
specifically for that of the production environments.
And this is one of the reasons why we will be using the Rocky Linux eight for our course.
And if you go a bit down, this is backed by most of the popular providers like AWS, Azure, GCP,
et cetera.
And you will see Rocky Linux image available for all of the major providers as well.
Now the second important criteria here is the cloud provider and the preferred cloud provider that we
will be making use of is Digitalocean.
Now, again, one of the question that comes is why Digitalocean instead of AWS or even other popular
cloud providers?
So let's quickly look into it now.
One of the great benefits of Digital Ocean is that it is very straightforward for new users to go ahead
and quickly create new servers in the cloud without much complexity and at an affordable cost.
However, the primary reason why we are going to make use of digital ocean is because of the free credits
that the service provider offers.
So Digital Ocean offers a credit ranging from 50 to 100 USD for new users.
So essentially, if you are making use of it, you can complete this entire course and even a few more
other courses within the credits that you receive from it.
So let's quickly look into it.
Now, if you would look into the digital Ocean website, the virtual machine starts with just 5 USD
per month.
So let's quickly explore that.
So if you just use a regular Intel SSD, one GB Ram, one Vcpu with one TB of data transfer and 25 GB
of SSD disk just cost you $5 per month If you go ahead and terminate the instance before a month, you
will be charged even less because this follows an hourly pricing.
So even if you do not avail the credits that digital ocean offers, the overall cost is much more reduced.
So this is one advantage.
And the second advantage here is the credit.
So if you would see currently Digital Ocean is providing 100 USD of credits altogether and in fact we
are using Digital Ocean even for our other courses, specifically the Kubernetes and Splunk course where
the users are deploying a highly available Kubernetes clusters completely free based on the credits
that they have received.
And this is the reason why we'll be using Nginx at a later part of this course when you will be using
various Nginx features like load balancing reverse proxy where you need multiple servers for following
the setup.
The credit will prove to be very useful.
Now again, one important part to remember here, this is not an advertising video for Digital Ocean.
I personally use it extensively and this is one of the reasons why I recommend it.
However, in case if you would want to use any other cloud provider like GCP, Azure, etcetera, you
are free to use.
Only primary thing that you need to note is make sure that you use a matching operating system choices.
If you make use of Ubuntu altogether, then there is a certain difference in terms of the installation
command in terms of the directory structure of Nginx.
So the recommended operating system is CentOS eight or rocky Linux eight to begin with.
So this is the high level overview about our lab setup.
I'll also be posting the link of referral which you can use.
To claim the credit and also get started in case if you would like to use Digitalocean.
So with this, we'll conclude today's video.