Learning Windows Server 2003

Rating:
Summary: Extremely deep and comprehensive
Review: This book is classic O'Reilly, well written and researched, heavy of the expository text and very light on graphics and screenshots. All of the key topics are covered, file and print sharing, active directory, IIS, .NET, VPN, the fundamentals of security, and even clustering.

One thing that struck me about this book was how much of it seems to come directly out of the author's experience. For example the security policy coverage is a blend of the straight technical material and practical advice on how good network security can be tailored to find the right balance of security and convenience. It's these practical insights that distinguish this book from just a straight feature review.

Certainly an easy buy for anyone doing administration work on Windows Server 2003.

Rating:
Summary: describes wide range of sysadmin tasks
Review: This book is the companion to another recent O'Reilly book, "Securing Windows Server 2003" by Danseglio. That book concentrates on security issues, while Hassell talks more generally about the wide range of sysadmin tasks you can find yourself performing.

In these days of Web dominance, one of the crucial tasks you have is to run a web server; Internet Information Services 6, in this case. Over the entire web, it ranks below Apache. But still central to your context, on your machine. Following the usual O'Reilly style, the IIS chapter is pretty succinct.

One noteworthy item is that it has a section entitled "Managing Web Services". Hold your horses, mate. It may not do what you think it does. The section actually describes running several long standing web services [note the lower case]. These do not refer to Web Services [sic], which describe programs that use Web Services Description Language or the Business Process Execution Language to aggregate into new types of services. An unfortunate case of terminology overloading.

Another item in the book may be attractive. Network Access Quarantine Control. Microsoft claims it is a much securer way for your mobile users to remotely connect to the machine. Currently, there is no version of it for non-Microsoft machines. Anyway, for some of you, it may be worth trying out.