Enterprise Mac Administrator's Guide (Books for Professionals by Professionals) [Paperback]

Charles Edge (Author), Zack Smith (Author), Beau Hunter (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1430224436 | ISBN-13: 978-1430224433 | Publication Date: October 29, 2009 | Edition: 1

Apple’s Snow Leopard release of Mac OS X is all about reliability, performance, and the enterprise. It’s likely to mark a major influx of Macs into the enterprise, corporations, and institutions that have been avoiding them. IT departments everywhere will be integrating Macs and Mac OS X into their IT infrastructure and this book will tell them how to do it. It will be the most authoritative, useful, and frequently referenced book on Mac OS X administration; the book every system administrator will have to have.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Charles Edge has been working with Apple products since he was a child. Professionally, Charles started with the Mac OS and Apple server offerings in1999 after years working with various flavors of Unix. Charles began his consulting career working with Support Technologies and Andersen Consulting. In 2000, he found a new home at 318, a consulting firm in Santa Monica, California which is now the largest Mac consultancy in the country. At 318, Charles leads a team of over 40 engineers and has worked with network architecture, security and storage for various vertical and horizontal markets. Charles has spoken at a variety of conferences including DefCon, BlackHat, LinuxWorld, MacWorld and the WorldWide Developers Conference. Charles' first book, Mac Tiger Server Little Black Book, can be purchased through Paraglyph Press. Charles recently hung up his surfboard and moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his wife, Lisa. Charles can be contacted at [e-mail]

^Zack Smith has been working as an IT consultant his entire adult life. He has consulted for insurance companies, entertainment companies, medical organizations, and governmental agencies. Zack holds an Apple Certified Trainer position where has taught at Apple and various market centers in Boston, Virginia, Los Angeles, and Cupertino. As a certified instructor, Zack has taught Apple's Security Best Practices Class, as well as many of the other Apple Certified System Administrator level classes (such as Mac OS X Deployment and Mac OS X Directory Services). Zack has been a speaker at MacWorld San Francisco as well as many other smaller venues such as IT user groups. Zack is also the author of a set of open-source IT administration software and scripts and has long term plans of being a full time Objective C developer. When not attending IT & Security conferences or traveling for work at 318, Zack can be found in Portland Oregon with his partner in crime Anna, and dog, Watson.^Beau Hunter is a systems engineer employed at 318, Inc. in Santa Monica, California. He has been working professionally with Apple technologies since 1999, and has been supporting businesses running the Mac OS for over 8 years. Throughout this time, he has developed a name supporting and securing Apple OS X systems in multiple capacities: cross-platform systems integration, clustered web and database solutions, high-performance SANs, high-capacity backup systems, automation, and multi-OS mass deployment. Beau has also spoken at numerous events including MacWorld 2009.

Product Details

• Paperback: 616 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (October 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430224436
• ISBN-13: 978-1430224433
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #366,258 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #19 in Books > Computers & Technology > Apple > Mac Administration

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding resource, May 7, 2010

By 

W. T. Armstrong - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Enterprise Mac Administrator's Guide (Books for Professionals by Professionals) (Paperback)

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb book for mac administrators, April 19, 2010

By 

Fred - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Enterprise Mac Administrator's Guide (Books for Professionals by Professionals) (Paperback)

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 !!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference for the serious admin, March 29, 2010

By 

Mark Turner (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Enterprise Mac Administrator's Guide (Books for Professionals by Professionals) (Paperback)

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.