Customer Reviews

Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server Resource Kit (It-Resource Kit)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Windows 2000 is considerably more feature rich and complex than was NT and the Server Resource Kit reflects this in volume. It was released the same week I took the MOC Accelerated Training for Windows 2000 and when my Instructor made fun of the idea of buying such a large set of books I calculated that I could read through the 7 volumes in 4 months if I read 50 pages daily. After finishing the Deployment Planning Guide I'm about a week ahead of schedule.

The Deployment Planning Guide reflects Microsoft's understanding that Windows 2000 must be implemented with thorough planning to achieve the potential it has for supporting an enterprise environment. This volume is a Project Manager's dream. Nearly every planning base has been covered here from identifying the appropriate composition of various teams to task sequencing to checklist templates. The material is so well organized for guiding an implementation project that I am surprised it was not released with a Microsoft Project file and instructions to just add your own dates and stir.

The Deployment Planning Guide provides a useful survey of many of the features of Windows 2000. Even after a week of MOC training and reading through the two volumes associated with that class I learned some new things from the Planning Guide about how Win2K works. For people who need to gain an understanding of what the options are and how all the pieces fit together this is an excellent read.

For the most part the Planning Guide is clearly and accurately written. A few times terms seemed to be misapplied and the results were confusing. Repetition became annoying as the reader was referred to Server Help or the Unattend.doc on the installation CD for more information too frequently. Chapters 13 and 25 repeat the same material, once to describe automating server installations and then again to describe automating client installations. These problems reflect an obvious effort to make each section self contained but even so the volume is quite readable as an overview of Windows 2000 networking.

Check back in about 30 days for my review of the 1500 page Distributed Systems Guide!

One of the negatives of the Microsoft books is that they often don't give a realistic view of Microsoft products. They often present them as they should work rather than as they actually do. In a sense, this book is no different. Despite this, the book is technically solid and contains much information that is not available anywhere else. You'll definitely want to supplement your studying by picking up other non-Microsoft Windows 2000 texts, but if you don't get this one, then you're simply not serious about Windows 2000.

This book is ahead of its time. Microsoft has a lot of "late-breaking" information that got included in the Resource Kit. Other authors will likely spend countless hours poring over these books for information to include in their own books. The Resource Kit contains more updated material than any other book to date. While the Resource Kit definitely isn't perfect and probably doesn't need to be 7,200-some pages, it still is worth picking up. When you combine it with Microsoft's rebate offer, it actually becomes a pretty good value too.

Microsoft was saving us money on this volume. If the Active Directory section had been released alone it would have been a 600 page book. But no, Distributed Security was included with about 300 pages and Enterprise Technologies with about 200 pages, and finally Desktop Configuration Management with about 200 pages. I have a permanent crease in my belly from lying in bed with this book weighing me down. Are all these topics related? Yes. Did I find myself paging into other sections of the book to make sense out of something that I read in another section? No.

There is a significant amount of repetition within sections and only a little between sections as new concepts are introduced that depend upon others already explained but I never found myself tempted to go look at an Active Directory concept again while I was reading about the Distributed File System, for instance. I do not understand how keeping these sections in one book enhanced value. It was hard to carry around too.

The Active Directory book earned 2 stars with me. The explanations were cloudy but the detail was good. It was in reading this section that I realized Microsoft was thinking of third party developers when they wrote the Server Resource Kit (SRK). While many references were made to the Software Developers Kit (SDK) in the SRK an attempt was made to lay out the ground work for understanding what it would take to customize tools to work with Active Directory. Much of this material was irrelevant to a network engineer who has to work with what is available without having the option or budget for customization but it seemed to me that Microsoft was showing helpfulness to third parties with this publication.

Distributed Security was written in a fairly accessible manner. Since the technologies covered in this section are new to many organizations I wondered if a special effort was made here to start from the ground up without expecting too much from the reader. I found it refreshing to get this package laid out neatly. This section earned 4 stars with me. The explanations were good but I thought the details on managing a security infrastructure were a little lean.

Enterprise Technologies made up the smallest section of the book and earned a 3 star rating with me. The explanations of Distributed File System, File Replication Service, and Network Load Balancing were okay but not great. The chapter on interpreting the Cluster Log was pretty obscure but I guess you have to be into your own cluster log before this material can get exciting.

Desktop Configuration Management was the last section and earned 3 stars. I happened to work through some CD based training on Preinstalling and Deploying Windows 2000 Professional while I was reading this section and that gave me a comparison with what is possible. The CD based training earned 5 stars with me. I learned more with it in about 25 pages than here in 200. Of course the CD only hit the high points while obscure details are reviewed here but it seemed to me that if you removed the coverage of obscure details the SRK still would not have been as clear in covering the technology.

I have to admit that in the course of reading this volume I began to question my commitment to reading the whole SRK. These presentations do not measure up in clarity to most other material I have encountered. I will continue for several reasons: 1) There is no more authoritative source of information. 2) The reading is getting easier as I go. Many concepts are related and now that I am over 2500 pages in I can read for new details and confirmation of my previously developed understandings. 3) I am stubborn.

I am starting the TCP/IP volume next. Funny how 1000 page books are looking small now. Check back in about 20 days and see what it was like.

This volume provides a very clear review of TCP/IP. Basic concepts are covered in separate chapters from Windows 2000 distinctives. This organization makes the book an excellent learning tool. Students can work through the basic chapters while more experienced readers might go straight to the Windows 2000 features.

One of the features that appears throughout the SRK is flowcharts. This can be a helpful method for visualizing the step by step activities of establishing connections, resolving names, etc. This approach is applied in this volume particularly to troubleshooting. I liked having a flowchart and a list of steps to clarify the points covered.

Microsoft is emphasizing the use of network analysis through the use of Network Monitor in the SRK. Capture files are frequently included to illustrate TCP/IP functions.

A number of new tools for testing and verifying TCP/IP on a Windows 2000 network are covered in the book. The coverage is a little light weight and it is common to be referred to Server Help for more information. It appears to be necessary to review Server Help, the SRK Companion CD, as well as the SRK itself to fully review some tools and features. This sounds worse than it really is however.

A chapter is devoted to IPSec. On the one hand an attempt is made to review the material from a basic level to begin educating the industry on an important security option. The chapter also tries to cover the means of making IPSec functional on a network. I wanted more.

I was also disappointed with the chapter on Quality of Service. There was too much repetition and important issues were not addressed clearly enough. For instance, not all QOS features can overlap on machines. It was not clear what features can be run together and which must be installed on separate machines to function appropriately.

The last chapter in the volume was on SNMP. It was basic and clearly written.

Nine Appendixes were included covering everything from the OSI Model to LMHOSTS files. It is a shame this volume will not be more accessible to students as it is really an excellent treatment of TCP/IP.

This is a must for any serious designer of a Windows 2000 network. An excellent addition to the official Microsoft curriculum taught in training centres. For example...Currently there is very little information on IIS 5.0 availible. The resource guide for IIS 5 in this package is excellent covering many aspects including the new 'digest authentication'.

AD designers looking at changing their AD schema should access this resource before embarking upon making changes...

Excellent sections on Kerberos authentication. Which is new to many NT administrators moving to Windows 2000.

There are many potential pitfalls when upgrading a network to Windows 2000. This resource kit is an excellent way of minimising that risk.

Very readable and a must for all serious Windows 2000 engineers....

This set of books is enormous. The sheer quantity of information that Microsoft has made available through this kit is almost overwhelming. If there is anything that you want to know about Windows 2000 server (regular, advanced and datacenter) you WILL find it here. An outstanding reference for system administrators and would be MCSA/MCSEs, this kit gives you incredible detail about the key features of Active Directory, Windows 2000 DNS, and migration planning. The only major draw back to the kit is its haphazard cross-referencing between the books within the set. Expect to do a lot of book switching and index checking. Some of the books also expect that you have read the Windows Help file on your server. This set has made a giant leap in readability. The clean layout and clear writing style keeps you attentive without loading "fluff" into its explanations.

I hate the size of this Resource Kit, the biggest ResKit published by Microsoft so far. But the material more than justifies its size - every thing you need to know about the Windows 2000 platform and Active Directory is in here. I keep coming back to this one from time to time to refer to a lot of stuff that I would've otherwise overlooked.

If you hate the idea of carrying or shelving this ResKit, the whole thing's available on the CD as well. I prefer to read long artciles/topics on paper - the CD servers as a Field Reference. Has plenty of tools too - some of them available for free on the Microsoft web site.

This Resource Kit is the best investment in a Microsoft Press book i've ever made.

Bharat Suneja
MCT

Print this out and take it to your boss. The IT department has to buy a this expensive set of books if you are running Windows 2000 Server. The on-line help is for users. This is the documentation set for professionals. There are the books MS no longer includes with the software. You also need this as a reference if you expect to get a W2K MCSE or if you make a living consulting to W2K shops. This should be a total no brainer. You might be able to administer one or two low usage servers without these, but if you intend to implement the powerful new features of W2K (that's what you paid all that money to MS for, isn't it?) then you simply can't get by without these. While a good deal of this info can be obtained from TechNet or Knowledgebase, you just can't highlight and dogear those resources for future reference. And even those resources are incomplete compared to this.
I'm giving this 5 stars not because of outstanding performance on the part of Microsoft Press with these editions, but because of the absolute necessity of having them.

This set of books goes into DEEP detail on how the OS works. Reading it reminds me of reading a Cisco operating manual. So many terms, and the fact that everything is done differently in W2K make this a very hard book to read.

I'm the Sys admin for my company, I've been using this set more as a reference instead of reading the whole thing. It's a very difficult set to read, deffinatly not for a begginer

As a Consultant that will migrate 50,000 users in 15 countries to Win2k this book is a must have. It is a superb reference and contains exactly the information I have been looking for about AD and Win2k server. The distributed systems guide alone is well worth the price. Real serious technical info about the AD.

My advice to anyone recruiting Win2k engineers would be to ask prospective candidates if they have read the resource kit, if the answer is no then don't employ them. Anyone who is serious about deploying Win2k must have this book