Mastering Active Directory. Understand the Core Functionalities of Active Directory Services Using Microsoft Server 2016 and PowerShell

Dishan Francis

Active Directory is a centralized and standardized system that automates networked management of user data, security, and distributed resources and enables interoperation with other directories. If you are aware of Active Directory basics and want to gain expertise in it, this book is perfect for you. We will quickly go through the architecture and fundamentals of Active Directory and then dive deep into the core components, such as forests, domains, sites, trust relationships, OU, objects, attributes, DNS, and replication. We will then move on to AD schemas, global catalogs, LDAP, RODC, RMS, certificate authorities, group policies, and security best practices, which will help you gain a better understanding of objects and components and how they can be used effectively. We will also cover AD Domain Services and Federation Services for Windows Server 2016 and all their new features. Last but not least, you will learn how to manage your identity infrastructure for a hybrid-cloud setup. All this will help you design, plan, deploy, manage operations on, and troubleshoot your enterprise identity infrastructure in a secure, effective manner. Furthermore, I will guide you through automating administrative tasks using PowerShell cmdlets. Toward the end of the book, we will cover best practices and troubleshooting techniques that can be used to improve security and performance in an identity infrastructure.

DevOps for Serverless Applications. Design, deploy, and monitor your serverless applications using DevOps practices

Shashikant Bangera

Serverless applications are becoming very popular among developers and are generating a buzz in the tech market. Many organizations struggle with the effective implementation of DevOps with serverless applications. DevOps for Serverless Applications takes you through different DevOps-related scenarios to give you a solid foundation in serverless deployment.You will start by understanding the concepts of serverless architecture and development, and why they are important. Then, you will get to grips with the DevOps ideology and gain an understanding of how it fits into the Serverless Framework. You'll cover deployment framework building and deployment with CI and CD pipelines for serverless applications. You will also explore log management and issue reporting in the serverless environment. In the concluding chapters, you will learn important security tips and best practices for secure pipeline management.By the end of this book, you will be in a position to effectively build a complete CI and CD delivery pipeline with log management for serverless applications.

Hands-On Robotics Programming with C++. Leverage Raspberry Pi 3 and C++ libraries to build intelligent robotics applications

Dinesh Tavasalkar

C++ is one of the most popular legacy programming languages for robotics, and a combination of C++ and robotics hardware is used in many leading industries. This book will bridge the gap between Raspberry Pi and C/C++ programming and enable you to develop applications for Raspberry Pi. You'll even be able to implement C programs in Raspberry Pi with the WiringPi library.The book will guide you through developing a fully functional car robot and writing programs to move it in different directions. You’ll then create an obstacle-avoiding robot using an ultrasonic sensor. In addition to this, you’ll find out how to control the robot wirelessly using your PC or Mac. This book will also help you work with object detection and tracking using OpenCV, and guide you through exploring face detection techniques. Finally, you will create an Android app and control the robot wirelessly with an Android smartphone.By the end of this book, you will have gained experience in developing a robot using Raspberry Pi and C/C++ programming.

Unity 2017 Game Optimization. Optimize all aspects of Unity performance - Second Edition

Chris Dickinson

Unity is an awesome game development engine. Through its massive feature-set and ease-of-use, Unity helps put some of the best processing and rendering technology in the hands of hobbyists and professionals alike.This book shows you how to make your games fly with the recent version of Unity 2017, and demonstrates that high performance does not need to be limited to games with the biggest teams and budgets.Since nothing turns gamers away from a game faster than a poor user-experience, the book starts by explaining how to use the Unity Profiler to detect problems. You will learn how to use stopwatches, timers and logging methods to diagnose the problem. You will then explore techniques to improve performance through better programming practices. Moving on, you will then learn about Unity’s built-in batching processes; when they can be used to improve performance, and their limitations. Next, you will import your art assets using minimal space, CPU and memory at runtime, and discover some underused features and approaches for managing asset data. You will also improve graphics, particle system and shader performance with a series of tips and tricks to make the most of GPU parallel processing. You will then delve into the fundamental layers of the Unity3D engine to discuss some issues that may be difficult to understand without a strong knowledge of its inner-workings. The book also introduces you to the critical performance problems for VR projects and how to tackle them.By the end of the book, you will have learned to improve the development workflow by properly organizing assets and ways to instantiate assets as quickly and waste-free as possible via object pooling.

Practical GIS. Learn novice to advanced topics such as QGIS, Spatial data analysis, and more

Gábor Farkas

The most commonly used GIS tools automate tasks that were historically done manually—compiling new maps by overlaying one on top of the other or physically cutting maps into pieces representing specific study areas, changing their projection, and getting meaningful results from the various layers by applying mathematical functions and operations. This book is an easy-to-follow guide to use the most matured open source GIS tools for these tasks.We’ll start by setting up the environment for the tools we use in the book. Then you will learn how to work with QGIS in order to generate useful spatial data. You will get to know the basics of queries, data management, and geoprocessing.After that, you will start to practice your knowledge on real-world examples. We will solve various types of geospatial analyses with various methods. We will start with basic GIS problems by imitating the work of an enthusiastic real estate agent, and continue with more advanced, but typical tasks by solving a decision problem. Finally, you will find out how to publish your data (and results) on the web. We will publish our data with QGIS Server and GeoServer, and create a basic web map with the API of the lightweight Leaflet web mapping library.

Metasploit for Beginners. Create a threat-free environment with the best-in-class tool

Sagar Rahalkar

This book will begin by introducing you to Metasploit and its functionality. Next, you will learn how to set up and configure Metasploit on various platforms to create a virtual test environment. You will also get your hands on various tools and components used by Metasploit. Further on in the book, you will learn how to find weaknesses in the target system and hunt for vulnerabilities using Metasploit and its supporting tools. Next, you'll get hands-on experience carrying out client-side attacks. Moving on, you'll learn about web application security scanning and bypassing anti-virus and clearing traces on the target system post compromise. This book will also keep you updated with the latest security techniques and methods that can be directly applied to scan, test, hack, and secure networks and systems with Metasploit. By the end of this book, you'll get the hang of bypassing different defenses, after which you'll learn how hackers use the network to gain access into different systems.

TensorFlow Deep Learning Projects. 10 real-world projects on computer vision, machine translation, chatbots, and reinforcement learning

Abhishek Thakur, Alberto Boschetti, Luca Massaron, Alexey Grigorev, ...

TensorFlow is one of the most popular frameworks used for machine learning and, more recently, deep learning. It provides a fast and efficient framework for training different kinds of deep learning models, with very high accuracy. This book is your guide to master deep learning with TensorFlow with the help of 10 real-world projects.TensorFlow Deep Learning Projects starts with setting up the right TensorFlow environment for deep learning. You'll learn how to train different types of deep learning models using TensorFlow, including Convolutional Neural Networks, Recurrent Neural Networks, LSTMs, and Generative Adversarial Networks. While doing this, you will build end-to-end deep learning solutions to tackle different real-world problems in image processing, recommendation systems, stock prediction, and building chatbots, to name a few. You will also develop systems that perform machine translation and use reinforcement learning techniques to play games.By the end of this book, you will have mastered all the concepts of deep learning and their implementation with TensorFlow, and will be able to build and train your own deep learning models with TensorFlow confidently.

Android Things Quick Start Guide. Build your own smart devices using the Android Things platform

Raul Portales

Android Things is the IoT platform made by Google, based on Android. It allows us to build smart devices in a simple and convenient way, leveraging on the Android ecosystem tools and libraries, while letting Google take care of security updates.This book takes you through the basics of IoT and smart devices. It will help you to interact with common IoT device components and learn the underlying protocols. For a simple setup, we will be using Rainbow HAT so that we don't need to do any wiring.In the first chapter, you will learn about the Android Things platform, the design concepts behind it, and how it relates to other IoT frameworks. We will look at the Developer Kits and learn how to install Android Things on them by creating a simple project.Later, we will explore the real power of Android Things, learning how to make a UI, designing and communicating with companion apps in different ways, showcasing a few libraries. We will demonstrate libraries and you will see how powerful the Android Things operating system is.