Customer Reviews

Solaris 8 Training Guide (310-011 and 310-012): System Administrator Certification (Pt.I, II)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

For the purpose of studying for the Solaris 8 Administrator exams, I found this book (and accompanying CD) very helpful. I am an experienced administrator, and the format of the book allowed me to breeze past chapters and concepts I was already comfortable with and focus on those concepts that I had little or no experience with (e.g. NIS, cachefs). In those chapters I focused on, I found enough material to be comfortable answering questions on that topic in the exams.

If nothing else, buy the book for the accompanying CD. It includes practice exams and study questions with a very similar feel and content to the actual exams. It also includes the entire book (which is quite thick) in PDF format, so you can read and work through the examples right on your computer.

I did find many errors (some typos, some in content), but cetainly not enough to get very frustrated with the book. (And unfortunately, not any more errors than other technical books I read of similar size).

I got this book to do my Solaris Certification and think that it does this job well, but it is also a very useful Solaris system admin reference. Bill Calkins presents the subject in an easy to read well presented style, with lots of examples.

The test software on the CD ROM is an excellent way to prepare for the exam and helps you to find out where you are weak so that you can concentrate on these areas.

The only thing that lets this book down is the numerous printing errors. The whole index is incorrect (you can download a corrected copy in PDF format from New Riders web site) and there are many mistakes throughout the - don't the publishers bother with proof reading anymore? This annoying when you pay (...) for a book, but even more so in that you may being going into the exam with information that is not correct.

This is why I have to give the book a 4 star rating and not 5.

I would recommend this book, but you may want to wait until an updated version is released that corrects the errors.

I passed 310-011 (87%) in April and just passed 310-012 (94%) using this book. The errata at the author's website was up to date and had any typos corrected. I emailed the author two times on name services and RBAC- he responded promptly both times, shared additional resources, and was very helpful. I found the CD-ROM exams to be a great self assessment tool to focus in on my weaknesses so I could go back and study those specific areas. Furthermore, the questions were right on for the real exam.
Overall, a very well-written book, lots of examples, step by steps, screen shots, etc. Very easy to read even if you are not in front of a Sun system to practice the examples. It's the best book I've found on Solaris Admin.

I've used Calkins' Solaris 7 Training guide to get my Solaris 7 Certs and now used the Solaris 8 version to get my Solaris 8 certs.
My tips for you: I practiced each example in every chapter and the excercises at the end of each chapter. If you are going for the exams, make sure you practice - it really makes the material sink in.
Another tip: The book covers alot of ground (because topics are covered thoroughly). Each chapter outlines the objectives for the exam. If you don't want to go through the entire chapter, just make sure you understand each chapter objective that the author describes. One way I assessed myself was with the exams that came on the CD-ROM. If I scored 90%, I figured I knew the material good enough and went onto the next chapter.
The chapter on RBAC was great- after digging through Sun's own documentation and other Solaris books, I finally found someone that can explain it clearly
I also have copies of the Sun Solaris 8 Training guides from courses I've taken and feel this book does a better job explaining the topics more thoroughly and completely. Lots of material here (if you need it), but it's very thorough and saved me a lot of digging.

I think where some people go wrong when they buy this book is they think it's only a cram guide for the Sun exams. These people are looking for a shortcut to become certified and there isn't one. You need to learn the material. They find a book packed with more information than they are willing to study. What they find is 1,000 pgs of training material. This book is an excellent "training guide" which presents everything you need to manage a Solaris system. In addition, it has end of chapter questions, excercises, and an exam test engine to assess your skills so you know if you're ready to go for your certification. I started out with little experience and used the book to self-teach myself about Solaris system administration. From what I see- it has everything the Sun 238 and 288 courses offer. It has saved me [money]in Sun training! The exams on CD-ROM and at the UnixEd.com website provide a great assessment tool if the reader decides to go onto take the certification exams. ( I used them and they were right on target). The forum at UnixEd answers any questions you may have as you go through the book- it offers great support for the reader. It was the best $$ I've spent.

This book was both easy to understand and detailed enough to cover the required subject matter. I don't think I've ever used a computer book with such detailed and accurate examples of how do different tasks. Usually a computer training guide gives you a only brief writeup of how to do a task and then leaves you to figure out why the task doesn't work for you on your computer. The examples in your book generally worked the first time with very little tweaking and often it even explained why something may not work and how to workaround the problem to ensure that
it does. The book starts from the begining and works through about 90% of what's on the exams. Very good sample questions. Was able to pass both exams using this book.

I studied the first 12 chapters, took the first test and scored a 96%. I studied the 2nd have of the book and got a 89% on the part 2 exam. Very well writen. I'm new to Solaris and the book was very easy to read. The examples were plenty and the end of chapter excercises gave me something to practice. Great book and a great future reference.

Overall, this book was strong at giving an overall view of what the 310-011 and 310-012 exams would be like. The book roughly followed the layout of both exams. That being said, there are some issues with the layout. Web Start is covered on 310-011, not 012 like the book states. I found the accompanying practice tests on the CD-ROM to be fairly inaccurate. The 2nd part of the book, which focuses on 310-012 contains a chapter on Installing a Server which is totally useless for the 2nd exam. Also, the author makes a trivial lesson out of SYSLOG in the first part of the book and then never mentions it again, even going so far as to say that SYSLOG does not warrant its own chapter. This book certainly helped me pass the test, but I strongly recommend borrowing the official Sun curriculum if you know someone who has it. Also, I strongly recommend purchasing the Boson practice tests. They will fill in the gaps where this book misses stuff. And make sure you spend more time on SYSLOG than this book does, you will need it for 310-012. Overall though, this is the best study guide out there and is also very handy as a refernece book for Solaris 8. Excellent coverage of NFS, NIS, AutoFS, and CacheFS for 310-012.

Much of the book is copied almost verbatim from the Answerbooks and man pages, both of which are freely available on Sun's website. In many cases the only changes are the typos the author has introduced, or slight differences in phrasing which only serve to make what was clear ambiguous. Where the book deviates from the official documentation it is often simply wrong. I'd like to commend Calkins' attempt to make the book more than a study guide for the exams, but his recommendations will benefit only the most naive of sysadmins.

Still, the chapter review questions are useful, as are the sample questions on the CD (although quite a few are hard to interpret because of the ungrammatical English). And this book is far better than the one by Cook et al.

I'm certainly glad to have read the book, but I'm going to throw it away as soon as I've passed the exams.

This book is good with plenty of useful information but it does skip a lot of stuff. This book would not be suited to someone who is starting from scratch. You must know vi and have some knowledge of administering a Solaris box. All round a good book if you are a Solaris Administrator with previous knowledge of the operating system who is just looking to become certified. The accompanying exam questions on the CD are very good and are a great help. Overall it is a good book.