Customer Reviews

Windows Server Cookbook for Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000

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4 star:		(3)
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This book is a must for any Windows systems administrator. True to the O'Reilly standards, the Windows Server Cookbook is easy to follow and packs a wealth of knowledge. For the novice admin, the short how-tos quickly get your task on target. For the more advanced admin, the script recipies are great for use in Group Policies or home brew management utils.

For larger IT shops, I also recommend Robbie Allen's "Active Directory Cookbook" in conjunction with this title.

This book has a sound foundation for managing a windows 2003 server. The chapters are logically organized. I used some of the examples in the book to migrate some file shares in my network from unix to windows, the book was there for the rescue (the fact that the author has a solid windows/unix experience makes this book even more attractive). The solutions in this book include windows scripting, an area that is seldom talked about in windows literature. If you are serious about managing a windows 2003 server competently then you want to have this book in your arsenal.

Most of us manage heterogeneous networks and need good references when swithcing between Windows and Unix platforms. This book not only provides an excellent compilation of scripts, but also points out many useful tools found in resource kits and support tool packages. The introduction to each chapter outlining the GUI tools, command-line tools, and scripting specifics that are covered in the chapter make the book easy to follow. You might have written or gathered some of these scripts throughout the years, but it is nice to see a good compilation gathered in one place. Very helpful!

The "Windows Server Cookbook" is very useful for new and experienced server administrators. The book shows how to solve administrative tasks in more than just one way. Every task is cut into a problem description, three solutions (GUI, command line and script) and a short discussion (additional information).
Personally for me the book is a great reference in how to automate administrative tasks on multiple systems and therefore solves my time! All examples are good explained and understandable not only for experienced scripters.

This book can make better SysAdmins out of those of us who are serious their work, whether newbies or seasoned veterans...

In the *nix and SQL worlds, it's long been the case that Real SysAdmins have at their disposal a toolkit chock-full-o'-scripts that are designed to get work done, from mundane one-off chores, to repetetive bulk operations, to specialized heavy lifting duties that are best left to well-debugged scripts.

In the old days, these scripts were personally hand-rolled into closely kept personal script libraries, accumulated over the course of years of duty out on the front lines. In O'Reilly times, serious-minded newcomers to System Administration have been able to quickly and usefully equip themselves with a wide range of tried and tested admin (and utility-gadget) scripts from celebrated titles like _UNIX_PowerTools_, etc.

Over the course of win32/win64 evolution, MS eventually gave SysAdmins a real command-line interface, an assortment of command-line admin tools and the ever whiz-bangy WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) interface. Very, very recently, MS has even begun to pull together the many pieceparts of MS-authored admin (and utility) scripts into downloadable Scripting Guides and the MS Script Center Repository. While these last efforts are all well and good, (no matter how late they are being brought to the table,) there are still too many things, scripted, that are missing in action in MS-land.

In this powerful, yet underserved, context, Robbie Allen's _Windows_Server_Cookbook_for_Windows_Server_2003_and_Windows_2000 (along with his equally impressive earlier effort, _ActiveDirectory_Cookbook_) is a very happy development. In _Windows_Server_Cookbook_, not only does Allen arm Windows SysAdmins with more than 500 genuinely useful, pre-rolled scripts, he *also* goes over the equivalent tools/steps in the Windows Graphical User Interface *and* even provides references to many powerful, specialized and (mostly) free tools that are to be had from the very good folks at SysInternals/WinInternals.

(Now, if only O'Reilly can find some equally good folks to kick out a _MS_SQL_Cookbook_...)

Does the complexity of a program ever decrease? Rarely, for commercially important programs. And Microsoft Windows Server is no exception. As Microsoft revs up its Server versions, so too does the need for a book like this increase. Allen gives us over 300 recipes or hacks or tips about some sysadmin task that you might be trying.

The chapters are defined by the broad categories of these tasks. To a large extent, the chapter topics can be recognised by a sysadmin of any operating system - managing disks, running jobs, handling processes and so on. But some chapters are indeed very Microsoft-specific. Dealing with the Registry, IIS, Active Directory and Exchange Server.

All the recipes have the merit of being quick to read and understand. Which is the attraction. If you have a syadmin problem, it is worth checking here first, just in case. You can easily see whether or not a solution presents itself.

We're a software engineering company, and I maintain our internal servers (6-7 servers) as well as provide customer support on our products. A lot of that involves asking for information from the customer - and this book helps in putting together scripts that I can send out that will send back information to us that avoids us asking to exchange 5 emails to get the same result. Anything that saves my time - and our customers time - is worthy of purchasing. Well done, well organised book - and the author returns emails!

Just to follow up on the other reviews Robbie has once again come through with another great book. As he always does he covers a wide variety of subjects and explains the task using the GUI, command line (if available) and using scripts to complete the task that is being explained.

I also enjoy the Discussion section at the end of many of the recipes. Robbie goes more in-depth and explains the guts or the recipe for example; here is an excerpt from the discussion for Recipe 17.22 creating an address list

"Exchange doesn't actually use the filter to do an LDAP lookup against Active Directory. Instead, the RUS does its own compare on objects one by one. This is why you can't specify a search base where the address list should start; it encompasses the entire forest including the configuration container"

That is good information and that is what you will get in the discussion sections -- Great Stuff!!

In Addition Robbie also has a "See Also" section at the end of most of the recipes. These point the reader to Microsoft KB articles -- again another very useful part of this book.

I also recommend the Active Directory Cookbook and I can't wait to get the Exchange cookbook when it is released later this month.

What makes this book so valuable, at least insofar as I am concerned, stems from the versitility of its premise. To those who work in a well-formed domain, Allen makes it easy to use the scripts. To those who have the hodge-podge environment created by virtue of many company buy-outs, then the dimensional advantage of both a perl and a vbscript view is extremely functional. While many of the scripts are elementary, the full-range of topics and scripts adds alternatives to almost everyone. And, at the very least, the approaches taken offers an addition mindset on how to recreate that mousetrap.

This is an excellent book. I already have a good 5 years of scripting experience used to help administer (primarily) Windows servers in large enterprises. I use wmi and adsi to gather a lot of data for my dashboards. I found THIS book to be a VERY VALUABLE ADDITION to my resource collection! I highly recommend it for those with scripting experience and especially to those new or contemplating scripting to help manage their infrastructure. PS - I write in Perl. The author has just about every script in the book available in Perl too. PLUS you are bound to discover a things that you hadn't known about (like Event Log triggers)!