Customer Reviews

SMS 2003 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (Expert's Voice)

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

 

 

A wonderful book with a great approach to problem solving within SMS 2003.

Greg and Warren do a very indepth step by step guide to SMS 2003.

The approach this book takes is simply amazing and well thought out. If you need to find a specific example, it is more than likely covered in this book. If you want to read the book from cover to cover, it flows extremely well from topic to topic.


Buy this book, along with SMS 2003 Administrator's Reference (ISBN: 0471749508) for all your SMS 2003 needs.

My job sent me to the SMS training plus I purchased 2 books that didn't help me with troubleshooting. I was even calling Microsoft for support they did little help as well.

If you are administering SMS this is a MUST book! I always look at it for a reference now i am finally confident in administering SMS.

I've been working with Microsoft SMS products for years. Unfortunately, SMS 2003 is a very complex product that takes time to master. After exchanging emails for a couple of years (it seems) I'm glad to have finally met Greg at a recent conference and that he asked me to review a copy of his book.

After reading some of the reviews for Greg's and Warren's book; `SMS 2003 Recipes - A problem-Solution Approach", I can only conclude that some bought this book for the wrong reasons. Rather than comment on any of the wrong reasons; I'd like to comment on what I liked about this book and how SMS Administrators can take their craft to a new level.

What I liked:
- The authors covered the basics of using VBScript to communicate with SMS and managing SMS tasks with VBScript. Discussion of coding best practices, and of interfacing with WMI are key items to cracking the coding mysteries of SMS 2003.

- The overall format of the book is well done; Problem/task statement, how to solve problem through the SMS 2003 MMC, then how to solve/automate the problem/task statement through code.

- Each section of SMS 2003 administration is covered in detail, from automation of site property settings to automation of advertisements.

- Index is excellent - since I do not usually work in a "linear" manner, it's nice to be able to quickly locate a topic and find more information.

- The chapter on building a Virtual SMS lab. While this topic may seem out of place at first in a "recipes" book, I can tell you first hand the importance of testing any code based solution in a lab environment before releasing these changes in production!

Conclusion
SMS is all about automation, saving businesses time and money through automating; hardware & software inventory, and software distribution (to name a few tasks). There are many tasks that SMS administrators perform on a daily basis that can be time consuming, especially when there are many SMS sites that need to be managed. Some of the VBScript code contained in this book is available on various sites. However, Greg and Warren are to be commended for a compilation of this information in one source location and thoroughly explaining its usage. This book is ideal for any SMS administrator looking to take his or her skill set to a higher level of ability!

I found this book to be very detailed when it came to the scripting aspects of SMS. A little creativity , an HTA front end and these scripts and you could have a very advanced SMS environment. I also liked the drill in on the ITMU screens to show someone that is initially installing it, what to expect.

The only drawback for this book in my opinion was the lack of OSD (Operating System Deployment) Feature Pack information. There is a paragraph that discusses it but not much more. However, this being a problem solution approach to SMS I am not surprised OSD isn't covered in depth.

This is the best book I have seen about SMS since SMS 1.2 (what 10 years ago?). I've working with SMS for over 8 years including 4 years at Microsoft and recently as a consultant. I recommend this book to all my customers who are just getting started with SMS as it walks them through basic tasks like how to create collection and so on. As you get used to SMS and want to do more sophisticated things, this book is right with you as it has vbscript examples for almost everything it describes doing through the GUI.

My boss told me we were going to purchase sms to run with our domain. So I started buying several books to help. This is the first book that started me out from the beginning and took me all the way to the end in terms I could understand.
I found the examples relavant and helpful all the way through the book.
Anyone who has to administer sms should start with this book.

All I can say is "Wow". Excellent approach to everything SMS. I like the concept, the problem/solution format, the "discussion" sections that will help a newbie understand why they might want or need that function, and the references directing the reader to additional resources. Obviously, I haven't read it cover to cover (it's hard to read vbscript verbatim unless you really need to...), but just browsing through it I'm totally impressed. When I get questions from techs in the company I support, or threads on discussion boards, I'll probably be replying... "did you check out chapter x, section y in SMS2003 Recipes yet? The solution is right there...

I'm going to keep this copy at home; and make work buy a copy for me to keep at my desk!

I normally do not order used books and when I need something I usually need it quick. This was an older book that I could find new but with the price difference and listed quality I gave it a shot. The service and delivery were very quick and quality was better than expected.

I will probably be looking at more used book purchases thanks to this experience.

I bought this book because the price was good. After reading and using the recipes. This book is excellent. It shows you how to do a task manually (through the SMS console) then it shows you the same task in VBScript. Honestly, this book should cost much more and look forward to more books using this format. A+++

This book is for advanced SMS administrators who work with SMS constantly. I was expecting the first few chapters to start from the beginning of an SMS install and explain some best practices methods, but this book expects you to have it all up and running.
All the script examples show you how to modify sms to make life easier for administrators. And wheres the included PDF version of the book so you can copy the scripts?? Well you need to pay an extra $10 for the privledge!
If you want to customise SMS and want example vbscripts then this book is definately for you. If you want a book to show you how to install and configure SMS & explain its options, buy another book.

Edit: Greg had contacted me directly and pointed myself to his publishers website where the source code can be downloaded. Thanks Greg.