Customer Reviews

Enterprise Mac Administrator’s Guide (Books for Professionals by Professionals)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The Mac admin world is full of resources which basically parrot Apple's official guidance and practice. Great in theory, but unless you're running a 100% Mac environment, you're left to figure out how to integrate things on your own. I've only had time to quickly browse through a few chapters, but I can already tell that this book is an exception to that stereotype. Full of practical advice and examples on integrating Macs into true *Enterprise* environments, it touches on things as diverse as customizing Microsoft Office 2008 deployments to 3rd party Active Directory tools to cross-platform Xsan integration.

For my day-to-day Mac admin needs, this book could pretty much replace every other one on the shelf. It has the depth and scope lacking in most other resources, while being clearly written and full of great examples and illustrations where appropriate.

I should have bought this a LONG time ago.

An excellent book. Good coverage on Mac technologies and supportive third party solutions (e.g DeployStudio, Extremez-ip, etc) that support and compliment Mac Server solutions. I really appreciate the authors highlighting third party solutions and workflows rather then toeing the line with the Apple doctrine. As an onsite engineer, my experience has been that there are many third party solutions which are more flexible and far more successful then Apple Os X servers built in solutions (for example, DeployStudio verses Netinstall).

This book is particular suited for anyone who needs to implement an Apple OS X server solution into any large organisation with an existing IT network infrastructure. I would strongly recommend this book for IT support staff in academic environments and/or in middle to large organisations that currently have existing Windows AD/Exchange infrastructure and have a need to add mac solutions (for internal departments). Good coverage on integration into Windows network with a particular focus on the Mac side of things. Very good overall coverage to the processes involved with enough detail to explain without getting bogged down in a quagmire of network issues.

I am still reading through this book and have already picked a lot of tips and explanations that are very helpful. The technical explanations are deep enough to gain some insight to the behind the scene technology workings (of Os X and other services) without the decoding of some of the documentation in Apples OS X Reference Library .

I really look forward to finishing this book and discover other (explanation) 'gems' that allow a peeking at the inner workings of Mac Os X (Server).
Overall, Very impressed. Well done, Gentlemen !!

This is quite simply the best book I've ever seen on advanced Mac OS X system administration. If you think you know it all, this book will prove you wrong. It goes both deeper and wider than others, covering common tasks such as client management and Active Directory integration in extreme detail, along with a broad range of topics including Xsan and iSCSI storage, mail and calendaring services, third party deployment tools, iPhone deployment, and even Windows deployment through BootCamp and VMware.

While the ubiquitous Apple Training Series books are well written and better edited than this, they're primarily a study aid for certification courses -- providing step-by-step exercises but little depth beyond what's published in the Mac OS X Server documentation. This is the book to reach for when you've passed the exams and are ready to go to work.

I found this book to by very easy and dare i say enjoyable, especially for a technical book. It has elements of advise, how-to and reference that gave it a nice blend to read through now, but to also keep on the shelf for future reference.

This isn't a review on the contents of the book. Normally books reviews are about the content, but this is such a large issue I decided I need to get the word out. The print quality is horrible. The text and images look fuzzy and spotted, like how a poor photocopy would look. I'm amazed such an expensive book can have such terrible print quality. The poor quality of the printing makes it hard to read the book, hence why this review is not about the book's content.

I'm surprised no one else mentioned this issue. I hope I just got a random dud. I'm going to exchange this book and hope the replacement has a better print quality! I'll update my review then too.

Great book if you are already an IT admin trying to get MAC familiar, this book breaks it down very well.

Charles and company did a great job covering the major aspects of Mac OS X Server. This book covers theory and real-world practice, Apple and third-party solutions. Even though it has the word "Enterprise" in the title, you will find this book useful if you are in an educational or small to medium business environment.