Customer Reviews

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 24seven

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book will not bore you about some philosophy, nor will it cover exam questions for passing some test. I've searched countless books, and this book had material in it that was exactly related to what I was doing at work. It is very uncanny, in that many situations co-workers and I have opened the book, and magically the page we first looked at was exactly related to our project on hand. Some of these choice topics are mail aliases (or Exchanges equivalent of them), de-fragmentation, journaling, scripting, spam/virus filter options, enigma of message queues, Outlook 2003 features, etc. The material is so accurate, we've even found tidbits on tweaking the registry or Active Directory LDAP data to configure changes. There's excellent coverage of OWA, securing message content, performance, disaster recovery practices, and more.

I can sum it up in that this book is very no non-sense practical, insightful, empowering, and well written. It covers not only the scope of Exchange, but also real world problems and solutions, relating to and around Exchange 2003.

I'm kind of surprised no one has reviewed this book yet, given that most Sybex publications are well written and this one appears to be a strong seller. So, here I go... I was recently thrust into the world of Exchange and needed something to get me up to speed. I have had a little experience with Exchange 5.5 but nothing that I think would qualify me as an Exchange administrator. Although, I have over 4 years of experience working with sendmail and qmail. I would not recommend this book to beginners (you should have a good understanding of email systems before you read this).

The above Editorial Review does a good job of summing up what this book covers, so rather than bore you with details again just read it. I find the most value of this book in the real world examples that it provides. You will also find plenty of references to KB articles, websites and tools that will help you manage Exchange 2003. The author also has a website with a lot of helpful information.

As with all technical books that I've read, there are typos and sometimes (rarely) the info just doesn't seem to make sense or agree with examples.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn how to more effectively manage, fine tune and troubleshoot Exchange 2003. On the other hand, do not buy this book if you are looking for information on migrating to Exchange 2003, it's not covered. I feel much more confidant about supporting Exchange 2003 after reading this book.

I had the Exchange 2000 version of this book and I think the Exchange 2003 version is even better. Unlike the previous book, which I bought after buying 2 other books, this was the first and only book I have bought on Exchange 2003. The authors recommendations and guidance have never failed to be accurate and helpful. The level of detail that I have found in this book is more than enough for what I have needed to keep my Exchange servers healthy and running. The chapter on how the Exchange databases work, how to back them up, perform maintenance, and how to repair them (if ever necessary) was great. Barry Gerber and Jim McBee clearly know their stuff when it comes to running Exchange servers.

The chapter on customizing Exchange was useful and has covered most of the questions that my boss has asked me but I did not know the answer to. Most importantly, when I have had any problems sending e-mail to the Internet, the advice in this book on how to troubleshoot outbound SMTP problems has been even better than the Microsoft knowledge base.

I am surprised at the reviewer that gave this book low marks and then admitted that he did not know enough about Exchange to have purchased the book in the first place. If you don't know anything about Exchange, then this book is not for you. If you are looking for step by step instructions on how to install Exchange or get migrated from another mail system then you should keep looking. But if you are looking for a book to help you keep your Exchange system healthy and available and to help you troubleshoot any potential problems, then this is the book for you.

I recently started in the world of system administration with a background in QA on Unix. After I successfully migrated a network to Active Directory and Exchange 2003, I ran into a lot of little snafus, and did an exhaustive search for a book that would simply help me get the job done on a day to day scenario, and I just found fluff. Fortuantely, I came across this book, and oh boy, I am oh so amazed.

What this book will do for you is provide real world solutions to common day Exchange problems. It does do some concept material, but really this is not a general concept book. If you do not or refuse to understand essential networking, mail SMTP concepts, and/or Active Directory (LDAP and Kerberos), then well, there's not much this book or any other book can do to help you.

Noting some reviewers' grief:

(1) You can back up a mailstore by backing up the database files. The database files are clearly documented throughout the book. Also, you might want to try out the ntbackup utility. In the dicussion of backup, the author does list solutions of third parties for brick-by-brick backup solutions.

(2) For initial deployment scenarios, this book doesn't cover explicitly or extensively. A quick search on Microsoft had some wonderful material including using ADC (Active Director Connector) for Exchange 5.5 integration and migration.

I feel saddened by users suffering with Exchange, for gone are the days when things were simple. If those users had URLs or e-mail addresses, I would have tried to contact them to offer free assistance...

Re-cap: Yes this book works for noobs, if they are resourceful, like everything else in the life of a system administrator. The book focuses more on real world usage, and less on initial deployment or migration from older Exchange 5.5.

A previous reviewer mentioned that this book was not for beginners, and admittedly, I should have heeded that warning. I am experienced with Microsoft (MCSE-2K) and computers in general. I assumed that those skills would be enough to make up for lack of experience with exchange. I was wrong.

I recently inherited the job of Exchange Admin. The previous admin had left the company several months prior, and when our exchange server died of old age, we decided to upgrade to a 2003 system all around.

After encountering problems, I decided to get this book. The book has some great advice as far as what you should do to keep your server healthy. i.e. "You should do 'this' regularly, and this is why." "You should make a habit of doing 'that', and it will prevent 'these' problems." The problem was, the book doesn't explain how to do 'this' or 'that'.

Perfect example. Chapter 4 explains the importance of backing up the Exchange database. Just a month earlier I had deleted 6 months worth of transaction logs that was filling my system hard drive. The book warns you to never to do that, but instead, back the system up. What it didn't say was how to do that. The author assumes the reader will know. Having no experience with Exchange servers, I didn't know that Exchange 2003 (or maybe, Server 2003) adds a plugin to Windows Backup specifically for handling an Exchange server backup.

If you are a novice to Exchange, this is not the book for you. Too much is left unexplained.

I have used this book for about a month now, and so far I have found it to be a very valuable resource. It does not spend a lot of time on migration strategies, so if this is what your are looking for you should find another book. Exchange Server 2003 24seven focuses on the day to day tasks any good Exchange Admin should be doing, plus some insight into how to do certain tasks that M$ doesnt tell you how to do. I would recommend this book to anyone trying to support any sized Exchange environment.

This book is the best of the best exchange 2003 book that describes the admin tasks an Exchange Admin *MUST* know for a day to day production.

This book is not for beginner as stated Jim MmcBee in the main desctiption of his book, but this book is rather for exchange (& Active Directory) admin with a good knowledge of exchange & AD.

As stated M. Timmons earlier, you may know for example how to automatically purge transaction logs by backing them up: Jim will just point u with advices to follow in order to have your system running smoothly, you will have to know the "How to..".

Jim focused on interaction between AD & Exchange with a really good experiences.

I highly recommend this one for any experienced admins exchange that want to know the Real World Best Practices of a day to day exchange administration.

This is a great book for learning the guts of Exchange 2003. Too many of the books of today are designed to help you pass a test and learn items related to the test. Well, this is not that book, fortunately. However, the knowledge in the book will help significantly when it comes test time.

Exchange Server 2003 24seven does provide coverage of Exchange 2003 at both a high level, but really drills down to an in-depth level that really helps the reader understand what Exchange is doing and how it is supposed to function.

One of my favorites was in the Categorizer section (trivia - the DLL for the Categorizer is phatcat.dll).

This book is a great resource for really learning Exchange 2003. As an aside, I have loaned my book to a few friends over time. The end result is that they won't give me my book back until they have ordered their own copy.

Very serious book but no talk on the Microsoft Exchange flaw of limited named properties that make your system stop(dreaded event ID: 9666)! Then you have to make a new information store and move all the mail boxes to that.
Of course Microsoft is sly and tries not too acknowledge this and newer Exchange 2007 has a feature to handle this better. We have 2003 enterprise.

But the book as a whole is really complete!
My grade = A

Within minutes, this book and I were solving problems. The table of contents reads like a laundry-list of common Exchange configuration and management issues; each chapter takes a moment to explain the pieces of the puzzle, then provides step-by-step instructions for practical tasks. The conversational tone is frank and confident, conveying a sense of real-world experience.

An example: "One of the biggest complaints I hear about getting RPC over HTTP to work is that the instructions are not very good, missing, or just wrong. For that reason, I'm creating a step-by-step guide that includes the instructions I have found useful for successfully getting RPC over HTTP to work properly."

Sure enough, the instructions were direct and to-the-point, and the procedure worked flawlessly to do just what I wanted to do. This book is exactly what I was looking for.