Rating: 
Summary: Full of Valuable Information
Review: I usually do not buy the large books because the authors frequently just fill the chapters with random information to make the book fat (do you guys get paid by the pound?). However I read the preview chapter here on amazon and found the sample to have great information and the reviews have been very favorable, so I took a chance and bought the book.I went right to chpt 22 on maintenance practices and found some very practical tips on managing and maintaining dns, dhcp, and wins. The best practice recommendations on daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly maintenance were extremely helpful! The other chapter I went to was chpt 29 on group policy management. The person who wrote the chapter obviously has worked in a large networking environment where system management is a chore. The tips and notes in that chapter were very insightful! I'm glad to have found a big book that actually has valuable information from the start to the end of each chapter! Nicely done!
Rating:
Summary: GREAT Reference!
Review: I was looking for a reference that covered the new Volume Shadow Copy, DFS, ASR, security components, IIS, RIS for Servers, and migration from Windows NT4 and Windows 2000. After downloading about a dozen whitepapers and buying a couple other Windows .NET Server books (all of which were outdated based on beta code or something), I finally bought this book based on a recommendation from a friend who works at Microsoft. This book has a chapter on everything! Not only did the introduction tell me about new features I was not aware of in Windows Server 2003 that I'm going to try, but the book had detailed planning and preparation information as well as step by step procedures on implementing the technologies (steps that actually WORKED with the full release (not beta) version of the operating sytsem). This is a great book for someone who wants to understand the basics of Windows Server 2003, or for someone experienced with Windows and wants to just cut right to the details. Excellent book!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book / Highly Recommended!!!
Review: I've bought several of Rand Morimoto's books in the past, and this book was just as exceptional as the others! The company I work for is a 350-person law firm with limited IT staff. I wanted to leverage the new security, server consolidation, data replication, and fault tolerance technologies built-in to Windows Server 2003 and turned to this book for guidance. I'm happy to say that by flipping through a handful of chapters in this book, I was able to successfully migrate my company to Windows Server 2003 this week! Very well written, and each chapter stands on its own, so I didn't have to read all 1200 pages cover to cover to find the information I was looking for! I look forward to flipping through other chapters to start implementing other Windows Server 2003 technologies! I highly recommend this book!
Rating:
Summary: Great DR/BP Information
Review: The coverage in this book on disaster recovery and business continuity is outstanding! I was in the middle of writing our DR/BP plan when I noticed this book had a whole chapter dedicated to DR planning. I took a chance and bought the book hoping there would be helpful information as I help my team justify our company's migration to Windows 2003. Very detailed steps, and great recommendations on benefits other organizations have received in their migration process. The steps on migration from Windows NT4 to Windows 2003 as well as the security sections are well defined. Very helpful book!
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Reference Guide!
Review: This book addressed my questions and then some! I've been tackling Group Policy problems for months and within minutes of jumnping to the chapter on Group Policies, I better understood where my problem was (and the new Group Policy Management Console is REALLY a Windows 2003 add-in that shouldn't be skipped!) We're collapsing a couple of our domains into a centralized forest, and some of the tips in the book clarified a misunderstanding that my colleagues have been arguing for weeks. I haven't even scratched the surface of this book, but I have a feeling it'll be well used for many many months to come.
Rating: 
Summary: Great W2K3 Administrators book
Review: This book is great for all people interested in Windows 2003 Server. It has examples and instructions on most of the administrative procedures. This book is not ideal as a study guide but more as a reference book for people who are already administators or systems enginners. The book is well presented and easy to read. Well worth buying
Rating: 
Summary: Not a comprehensive guide
Review: This book judging by its massive size seemed to be the end all comprehensive guide to everything server 2003. The main reason I bought this book was for info on IIS 6 and windows media server. The IIS 6 material in this book is phenomenal but much to my dismay not one word was written about deploying windows media server. How can u not even cover one of the most changed products from 2000 server? The windows media server has undergone some major changes which I believe warrant some kind of coverage in this book.
Otherwise the book is very well written and covers the meat and bones of IIS and terminal services as well as AD. Alot of the book is for planning the migration and deployment of the server 2003 environment which is useless unless your running a fortune 500 company's IT dept.
Rating:
Summary: COMPREHENSIVE!
Review: This is an outstanding book ... It is very comprehensive and well thought out. I have found everything that I have been looking for. I just installed Win2K3 and I keep this book right by my side for reference. Great great great. Thanks guys.
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