Customer Reviews

Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 8 Study Guide (Exam 310-011 & 310-012)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have been looking for a textbook that I can use to teach a course in Solaris system administration and I have finally found it. I like this book because: 1. It is readable. Let's face it, UNIX texts are not fascinating reading, but this one holds my interest better than others I have reviewed including Sun's books that come with their exam preparatory courses. 2. It is comprehensive. It does not just concentrate on being an exam cram for the certification exams. The information presented explains why things work the way they do. 3. It has great support. The CD that comes with this book contains a summary of each chapter and a practice exam which provides feedback after each question that lets you know why each possible choice was either correct or incorrect. I have not taken the full practice exams that come on the CD, but I retaken the practice exams on the dullest chapters after multiple hour intervals and aced them thanks to the feedback system.

If you want to skate through the exams there are other sources that can help you do this, but if you want to learn UNIX system administration and study for the exam, this is an excellent book.

I have been doing SA work on Suns for over 10 years. When our
project decided to make the upgrade from Solaris 2.6 to 8.0 I
thought I could upgrade my knowledge and consider getting the
certification, too. However, this book does not seem to get the
job done.

I have never seen a technical book so full of errors. There
are typos; there are errors in the sample output; the technical
data is wrong.

There also seems to be a basic lack of knowledge of UNIX and
Solaris. For example, (paraphasing a bit) "a directory is not
a file", or "the getty process allows users to access the
system". Au contraire - a directory IS a file and getty belongs
in SunOS; Solaris uses saf.

This book appears to be an attempt to take some boilerplate,
throw in some unique content, and get it out to market as
quickly as possible. I would not recommend this to anyone.

When I look for a study guide, I usually aim for a book that is deep enough to come in handy after the exam. I have not taken the test yet but after reading the chapters it is obvious the focus is to teach the bare minimum to pass. I suppose this could be considered a good thing. I just bought a used sparc10 to play with and let me tell you, this book has not been very helpful. I would like to mention that an earlier reviewer has made a few mistakes in pointing out parts left in/out of this book. This text does include information about RBAC, and has dropped SAF(SAC) as it should. IPv6 is not an objective for the SCSA. In conclusion,.. This looks like a good study guide, but you will probably want to supplement it with another book or web docs.

This book ,although it follows the Sun Solaris Study guide is not very helpful in real terms , also the test on the cd-ROM is less than helpful if you think it is going to give you a feel for the real exam forget it. The type of questions asked are not searching enough to make one think hard enough. My advice to anyone thinking of taking the exam is to stick to an official Sun Microsystem training manual and learn everything , literally. The exam is not at all difficult just tricky in part , and so if you knew the subject well enough you will pass.

The book covers almost all of the exam topics with sufficient details. I only use the book for 310-012, however I suppose this would be enough to say it is good enough as the second part is much more detailed than the first.

I like the language the book uses which makes it easily readable. And some funny answers within the practice questions make it fun.

There are some number of typo however, I suppose this is ok as it is the first edition.

Exam Watchs are somewhat userful except the ones offers you to memorize ALL options of a specific command ;)

On the job and from the classroom sections makes the book not a resource only for the exam but also for the future carrier.

Finally, the CD is terrible and has nothing in it. Considering you also pay for a set of practice exams while purchasing, it is quite frustrating. There is only one test set with 61 questions. An they even did not bother to put an exam-sim software, tests are in html format. 3-4 of the questions have wrong answers and there is no option to select the questions you are bad at or the exclude the ones you are good at. As there is no randomization function and you face the same questions at the same order each time, the test can only be taken one or two times, then you memorize the correct order without learning the subject.

The whole exam-sim seems to be prepared in a hurry just to give a CD with the book and I suppose it is useless at all. There is nothing else intresting in the CD.

As a final comment, I suppose the book is enough for certification with the help of a few additional resources such as practice tests.

Since I am studying for 310-012 (part 2) my review really only covers that section.

This book seems to have good information. It covers most of the exam objectives quite well and fortifies many of the key concepts with examples.

Where it falters, however, is in the exam simulator that is included on the companion CD. It is so full of errors that getting an accurate reading of your readiness is difficult at best. Taking their pratice exam was more frustrating than helpful. There are several questions where an answer is listed as being both correct and incorrect...one question i would take as an editing mistake but several? That is just carelessness.

Buy the book if you want to reinforce other reading, from the Solaris Training Manuals for example. But there are far better, and more accurate exam simulators out there for Sys Admin II.

This book should never have gone to press in its current state, and perhaps not at all. It is full of factual errors, editing oversights, and evidence of just plain laziness on the part of the writers and editors. Examples:
1. Unmodified boilerplate: Though focused entirely on Solaris 8, the help files note that "Microsoft may modify these exam characteristics at any time."
2. Self-contradictions: A multiple-choice exam question that asks "Which of the following best describes the client-server model?" gives as its answer "A, B, C: Don't get too bogged down in determining if one system is a "server" or a "workstation," but then goes on to explain that the most complete answer is C.
3. Inconsistencies: The answer to the question "Which script is used by the system to re-add a swap file into swap space each time the system boots?" is B, /sbin/swapadd, but the explanation below the question says that the answer is C. The result is a correct answer may be counted as a wrong answer.
4. Throw-away answers in the multiple choice questions: In a question about the advantages of a virtual disk management system like DiskSuite, the first choice is "Free cappuccino from Starbucks with every purchase of a virtual disk management application." In another, a possible choice is "Solstice Too Sweet." Choices like these reflect poorly indeed on the writers, editors, and publisher.
5. Factual errors: The supposed correct answer to the question "Which of the following best describes the term network booting?" is "Using a remote server from a console or dumb terminal." Not true, since not all uses of a remote server from either of these devices are instances of network booting, and a far more precise answer could easily have been stated.
6. Poorly worded questions: The possible answers to "Which of the following lines is the correct definition of loghost?" are "loghost," "@loghost," "loghost@domainname," and ".loghost". The problem is that none of these are "definitions" of loghost. The question seems to be asking "In /etc/syslog.conf, what is the correct way of indicating that a particular type of syslog message should be sent to the loghost?", but readers have to figure that out for themselves.
7. Overreaching claims, as in this from the blurb on amazon.com: "the book contains hundreds of practice exam questions and hands-on exercises." I expected to see plenty of new questions each time I took the practice exams, but the same questions come up over and over. The exercises are perfunctory and do little to test the reader's knowledge of the subject matter.
In short, this book is of poor quality, especially given its high price. I would not recommend it except as a supplement to other higher quality books on the Solaris 8 exams.

If you rely on this book only then you will surely fail the exam.
This book does not cover the necessary topics like the KERNEL,BOOT PROM and info about serval configuration files in depth. The cert exam is not a true representation of the real exam.There is only a single exam in the examslim software with questions and these questions are sometimes ambiguous. In short you need to read sundocs and practice on a system.

I bought this book because it was the only one at the time that was on Solaris 8. I suppose that's also a bad thing since there was nothing else to compare it to. I ordered the New Riders book and am very impressed with it however. The Syngress is decently organized, but not good enough for remembering things -- for example, all the switches for the commands you will invariably need to know are not as cleanly laid out for quick reference (many are just crammed together in a single paragraph). New Riders is not like that -- it's much better laid out.

Syngress isn't BAD, or terrible, by any means (it covers the exam topics fairly well), but if you want a well-laid-out book for easy reference, and slightly more information, I would suggest you get the New Riders Solaris 8 book instead. I regret that I had to buy 2 books to see this, but had I waited, I would have seen that in the long run, the New Riders is just better. (ISBN 1578702593). The only disadvantage is that the New Riders is going on a "Soft Cover-kick" as I call it -- which most definitely is not as good as the Syngress Hard Cover. But to be honest -- I don't keep my older certification books for long. I find that my knowledge improves quickly enough to the point where I need other, better (geekier) resources.

If you want a true Bible that makes a good companion, and even better "keeper", get Unix System Administration (3rd Ed. at least). It's worth the money (I think it's actually a college book, hence the "no-discount-applies" theory that most publishers for academic books subscribe to). High, but worth it, ay [price] (ISBN 0130206016). That book deserves it's own review, which I've done, but you won't find many sub-5-star reviews of it anywhere (it's the best).

Take any review mentioning type-o or incorect text to be true. I read this book, took the quiz's and full exam. It is chuck full of errors and idiodic text. Some subjects are only covered with minimual examples or explination.

I am a seasoned veteran, and require more detail. This might be a good book for the introduction level, but for experianced users I would recomend passing on this book.

Some things I found on the test where:
[4 ] Which of the following would not be an advantage of a virtual disk management application?
A. Free cappuccino from Starbucks with every purchase of a virtual disk management application
B. The ability to concatenate disks

[ 8 ] For which of the following is the Server Management Console best used?
A. To impress employers with your ability to "point-and-click".
B. To manage administrative tools from a central location.

[31 ] Which volume management application uses metadevices to represent logical disk mappings?
A. Solstice Too Sweet
B. Sun TownsEdge Volume Manager

WHEN HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A SUN TEST WRITTEN LIKE THIS? And it seems they mix test i and ii together.