Customer Reviews

Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2 Administrator's Companion (Pro-Administrator's Companion)

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

 

 

While this book is called the SBS 2003 R2 companion book, and is indeed a companion to the R2 product, even if you don't have R2, but merely SBS 2003 SP1, this is an excellent resource and should actually be purchased instead of the original SBS companion book. The "must have" features for non R2 owners include the chapters on setting up secure wireless and the ISA content. The "must have" stuff for R2 era owners obviously include the WSUS information.

If you are a SBSCer.. there are three must have books:
This one, the SBS unleashed and the SBS Advanced Best practices. All three are the "holy trinty" of SBS technical books. Don't install a SBS box without 'em. Each of them are also unique enough to give fresh insight, so don't think just because you have one, you don't need another.

Bottom line, another great book from Charlie Russel and Sharon Crawford, another fantastic resource for the SBS community.

(Full disclosure I was a community reviewer on this book and Charlie Russel was extremely gracious in his accepting and incorporation of my feedback. Thank you Charlie for a great resource for the SBS Community)

I found this book to be an excellent one volume resource on the variety of features and functionality offered in SBS.

This administrator's reference could be very deep, twice (if not three times) the number of pages and take a good part of a year to decipher. I felt the authors did an excellent job of condensing the information, selecting content that was focused and concise, and expanding (where needed) with some very practical "real world" and "under the hood" advice.

The authors are experienced enough to editorialize their own content and say it like it is. SBS offers functionality galore. Given the full list of included features, that functionality comes with some serious security liabilities. This book breaks it down by delineating the practical versus possible uses for SBS features and suggests to the reader in plain terms... "do this and don't do that!".

If you are looking for a single volume reference on the subject matter of Small Business Server 2003... this is the one. It reads like having an in depth tech talk with someone who's in the know while chatting at your breakfast table.

Thanks to Charlie Russel, Sharon Crawford and all MVP's who may have contributed. Five stars!

The first half of chapter 22, Disaster Planning, was so verbose, repetitive, and bureaucratic that even the federal government would be overwhelmed by its recommendations. The authors temporarily forgot the target audience for this book, but regained focus in the second half of the chapter. Now, on to the other 22 chapters and appendices...

Superb!

From the table of contents to the index, the layout of this book is simply superb. It is clear the editors worked as hard as the authors, and the result is a book in proper English that is a joy to read. This is rare for IT books, but not for Microsoft Press.

On substance, this is the most lucid book on Small Business Server (SBS) and it covers all features of SBS03 R2. Each chapter explains the features and their concepts, then offers clear step-by-step procedures to implement those features. Screen-shots complement the procedures without reducing the book to a photo album. This book imparts the solid foundation necessary to delve deeper into the various features, but above all, you will be ready to deploy SBS by the last page. This is the most current (based on R2) SBS book on the market today and is ideal for beginners. Those already familiar with server administration should consider Small Business Server 2003 Unleashed.

I maintain a small business server for a local company. When we recently upgraded to MS SBS I found I needed some help, so I purchased this book. In just the first use it saved me many hours of time and enabled me to set up the Exchange Server to automatically download mail from POP3 Website accounts and store it in the local mailbox. Users are happy, I'm happy (no storage used on the Web server and I don't have to configure Outlook on every computer in the building for the user's POP3 email), and life is good. After that, I read the rest of the book. (OK, I only skimmed parts of it.) I found several other tips that I have since used, like redirecting the user's "My Documents" to a folder on the server. The book also comes with a CD that contains a PDF copy of the book along with numerous Knowledge Base articles, white papers, and other such support documents. I left the hard copy of the book at my home but put the CD onsite so I would have it there in case I need it. All-in-all, this was a great investment and I recommend it to others using MS SBS.

Although a great book stack full of information, the book has all it's information jumbled all over the book. I found it annoying having to find more info on a certain subject buried deep into the book. A good book, but not a book I found easy to read...

This book has everything in it. That said, for the neophyte SBS user, it's organization and presentation challenges even the most persistent reader.

Key steps in a procedure are often submerged in the center of paragraphs without any highlighting to indicate the special importance of the content. I would much prefer the use of lead-in paragraphs with bulleted lists of the sequential steps in which a procedure must be accomplished. The action verb in each step should be well high-lighted in bold type.

And, the choice of fonts for the publication makes it difficult to read for those of us with limited vision. Thankfully, the inclusion of the full (PDF) book on CD helps overcome this shortcoming. Still, the only _real_ way to use a book is to flip through it; you can't do that with a PDF.

I think the book's content is remarkably current. Anyone who has used one of these very, very complex software packages knows that the only constant is change. Mr. Russel has helped me understand concepts that persist through the inevitable changes.

It's easy to tell that the preparation of the Administrator's Companion is a labor of love; it will surely become a treasured volume in my library.

This is a great book. Easy to read, full of real world footnotes, that the authors shares with the reader. I like the format, the detail on most topics covered. There are some weaknesses I found, but they are minor complaints when compared to the overall quality of this guide:

1. Very little explanation of Volume Shadow Copy, that its enabled by default is nice, but what partition (or what logic does SBS use when deciding to enable it), no detailed explanation on how it works, how to adjust it, nor how the clients get the Shadow Copy Client.
2. I would have also liked a little more advanced custom installation walk-through, with explanations and justifications for changing pathnames for folders such as "User Shared Folder", "ClientApps", Exchange itself, some SBS compononets..

This guide/manual is extremely detailed and walks you step by step through the process of installing and configuring a server using Windows Small Business Server 2003.

I didn't have experience using Small Business Server and I couldn't have completed a proper installation/setup and configuration of our Server unless I had this book. I tried prior having the book and ran into several issues. I had to restart the process and I'll was well when I had this manual to guide me.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking to install Windows Small Business Server 2003. It makes the process go much quicker and without error. I also learned quite a bit just browsing through the entire book.

This book has everything you need. I've installed SBS 2003 R2 for 3 different companies so far, this book came in handy each time.

If I have time I will come back and share some specific examples, but for now I just wanted to say this book does not deserve a 1 star rating, its 5 stars all the way!

Bottom-Line: If you need a comprehensive reference guide to (almost) everything SB 2003 R2, you can't go wrong with the "Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 R2 Administrator's Companion."

Part of my portfolio as a small business consultant entails building and administering Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 (SBS) installations. Although I have installed, configured and administered a plentitude of Microsoft Windows 2003 Servers, I was new to the SBS 2003 environment. And I was to discover that SBS and SBS Release 2 (R2) has quite a few difference from the full blown NOS is was used to dealing with. So I picked a copy of the "Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 R2 Administrator's Companion."

The 701 page "SBS 2003 R2 Administrator's Companion"--published coincidentally by Microsoft Press--is a standard size reference guide that provides step-by-step instructions for planning for, installing, administering, and troubleshooting of SBS 2003 R2. These instructions include Planning the Network Infrastructure, Installing SBS 2003, Upgrading or Migrating to SBS 2003, Patch Management, Software Distribution and Management, Remote Control of Client Systems, Disaster Recovery, Site Administration and other issues.

I like that the guide takes the user from the planning stage, through installation and administration of the product on the troubleshooting. "SBS 2003 R2 Administrator's Companion" is very much a one stop guide to everything you'd need to know to properly administer SBS 2003 R2. The book is replete with documented procedural examples that cover administration fundamentals (site administration as well as client, Exchange, and ISA server administration), active directory services, SQL database administration, as well as Site database maintenance, query creation and reports, and backup procedures. The book is specifically designed for beginning SBS 2003 R2 administrators and those who have more than a passing familiarity with the NOS and Active Directory (AD).

My Experiences

Since I started installing SBS 2003 R2 for clients I have found the "SBS 2003 R2 Administrator's Companion" an invaluable ally in the almost daily barrage of administrative chores associated with even a mid-sized SBS 2003 installation. From monitoring and managing the Exchange 2003 Server and SQL database, to tracking processor, disk, and memory usage, to creating and managing users and client workstations, the functionality built into SBS can be overwhelming.

This is where the "SBS 2003 R2 Administrator's Companion" really makes a difference in the amount of time I can spend looking for answers. Most of the answers I have sought have been within the pages of this very concise and mostly complete book.

That is not to say that the "SBS 2003 R2 Administrator's Companion" has all of the answers; it doesn't, nor would I expect it to, but it does contain the most common administrative tasks one might encounter.

"SBS 2003 R2 Administrator's Companion" is well laid out, and I believe written in an easy to follow, logically flowing format that make finding the answer easy. Is it the only book or reference material you should have at your disposal? Of course not, but it can certainly enhance your Microsoft SBS 2003 R2 reference arsenal, and give you a quick a compact guide to look for answers. Don't want to carry the book? Carry the companion CD-ROM instead; it contains a complete copy of the book in .PDF format.

Could I be a successful SBS R2 Administrator and user without the "SBS 2003 R2 Administrator's Companion?" Sure, but it would be a lot harder and a lot more time-consuming; and time is not something I have a lot of. : If you need a comprehensive reference guide to (almost) everything SB 2003 R2, you can't go wrong with the "Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 R2 Administrator's Companion", from Microsoft Press.