Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Administrator's Pocket Consultant

Active Directory Cookbook for Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000

Other Operating Systems

Mastering Windows Server 2003

Format: Hardcover
Author: Mark Minasi
ReleaseDate: 07 April, 2003
Publisher: Sybex
Rating:

Loaded with information, but not flawless
But because it tries to make you an expert on everything at once - from DNS to security - it falls short of what appears to be its most ambitious goal, skipping some important issues altogether. This book covers an amazing body of knowledge, and explains it in a comprehensible and practical manner (although it can get repetitive at times).

the book made understand dns
Those pages were about DNS that I had never been able to find a single book explaining how to implement DNS in a real life environment in a clear language , yet detailed. I have bought minasi's book after reading 4, 5 page in a book store.

Since this is the first review I have ever written, I would like to emphasize on two aspect of the book which makes the book different from the others.

First , All scenarios in the book are real life situation that IT person can be face in real project. Explanations are so much detailed that you can actually configure your system step by step by following the book.

Second, The actula reason why i bought the book, Mark discusses underlying technology in a detailed conceptual way,that gave me the overall understanding and insight of what really is going on. The books never makes you confused. Virtually every aspect of networking are covered.

If you are tying to learn or working with windows network, this book is a must.

I like saying that , to know something in deep is a skill which many people posseses, but to teach what you know to other people and make them really understand what you know is a kind of skill, unfortunately, few of us posses. Mark minasi is definelty one of those people.

I hope he will continue sharing his knowledge by writing
Onder, Toronto/canada


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Great Tomb
If you are new to system administration, then this is the book you need. This book is a great tomb of information and is incredible. One thing I always loved about the author is that he delves into the technologies and gives practical how-tos, and even has some forgotten information how how to support older Win 9X/ME/NT platforms that seem to used.

Though I think Minasi is a great author, I don't think this book overall distinguishes itself from Windows 2000 Server book. This book seems to be an update from the earlier, but I didn't see much in the way of specific Windows 2003 coverage. I wish there was deeper coverage for server solutions like RRAS and RADIUS, SUS, PKI & certificates, etc. Some really remarkable sections are DNS, DHCP, and especially replication.

One thing that I was shocked was the Windows-Macintosh interoperability section. Minasi didn't do his homework on this one topic. He talks about using SFM (Services for Macintosh) for Mac OS X support. This will actually cause data loss if this solution is used, and SFM support AppleShare 2. 0 (from System 7 days), which is incompatible with Mac OS X. I tried it, and the files on the Windows server were corrupted. Just rip out and burn those particular pages.