Rating: 
Summary: The good and the bad parts of this book.
Review: This book is good for the general parts and has good short explanations on most areas. This book is not good a one source book. Yet it is an excellent complimentary source.
Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: This book is invaluable for those learning Active Directory, whether from the ground up or with some background in it. Not only did it help our new technicians learn A.D. but it also helped us old dogs learn new tricks. With knowledge from this book (and a few others) two of our technicians were able to write out a VB script to allow us to setup all of our Active Directory users, groups, OU's, User Home Directory's, and User Profile Directory's in one pass by importing the pertinant settings from tab delimited text files! Pretty Cool!
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: This book is invaluable for those learning Active Directory, whether from the ground up or with some background in it. Not only did it help our new technicians learn A.D. but it also helped us old dogs learn new tricks. With knowledge from this book (and a few others) two of our technicians were able to write out a VB script to allow us to setup all of our Active Directory users, groups, OU's, User Home Directory's, and User Profile Directory's in one pass by importing the pertinant settings from tab delimited text files! Pretty Cool!
Rating:
Summary: Hard core
Review: This book is really hard core. Very in-depth coverage. The author apparently has had a lot of experience in his design of AD for a UK University. A lot of coverage of design strategies, but as with all O'Reilly books, it seems to step from one level to another very quickly and is therefore hard to follow at times. If you already have a background in AD, this will probably be a good book for you to build on. I can hear the British accent as I read this book.
Rating:
Summary: A must have for Active Directory and ADSI
Review: This book, written by the person who headed the largest and broadest Windows 2000 deployment in Europe to date, not only covers the 'What' of Active Directory, but the 'How' and 'Why'. This includes not only the technical aspects of Active Directory but also the operational and business aspects that are all too rarely addressed in this kind of book.It also covers key concepts (and code) of ADSI and Vbscript. I am a real fun of O'Reilly books, and this is another gem in my library.
Rating:
Summary: Excellence is Just the Word
Review: This is a no nonsense book that goes into the details of Active Directory Design. I used this as part of my preparation for Windows 2000 Active Directory Admin (70-217) exam. It's for the adventurous sysadmin who is prepared to script and tinker with the AD. Replication, Scripting and GPO's get my top marks. This book is like all O'reilly books, written for enthusiasts by enthusiasts - You'll like it or hate it with a passion !!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Coverage of Key Technology
Review: This is a truly excellent book. Written by the person who headed up the largest Windows 2000 deployment (in Europe) to date, it not only covers the 'What' of Active Directory, but the 'How' and 'Why'. This includes not only the technical aspects of Active Directory but also the operational and business aspects that are all too rarely addressed in this kind of book,but that absolutely have to be dealt with if any kind of ROI is to be realised from this technology.If that isn't enough, the last part of the book shows how to roll your own scripts for adding users, querying the Active Directory etc.. Or as I prefer to think of it, repetitive tasks that you don't really want to go near the gui for. I have this book down as having 585 pages of solid fact, no filler, all examples kept short and focussing on the point in question. This is an example of how technical books should be written - lots of hard fact with unambigous examples in a well-written style. If you have to go near Windows 2000 & the Active Directory (and I suspect one or two people may be in this position) then buy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Half-decent combo book on AD and scripting
Review: Update: I finished reading the book and though I still basically feel the same about the AD part, I have found that the scripting part is not too bad *IF* you have some prior scripting/programming experience (which I do), particularly with VB or VBS (which I do). Some of the scripts I have been able to modify and use in my job as a sys admin. Now, overall, I will bump my rating up from 2 stars to 3 stars. $31.47 with free shipping is not a bad deal for a half-decent book on AD with the bonus of several hundred pages on scripting. I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too ' either you get a full-fledged AD book and a separate scripting book or you get this one and it does a half-decent job covering both topics. Additionally, the author, Robbie Allen, does respond to questions via e-mail in a prompt manner.
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First off, this book is not for beginners. Do not buy this book if you have no experience with or knowledge of Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Active Directory. That said, here is my review: I'm more than 2/3 done reading this book and so far I cannot recommend it. The book is not practical enough for a real sys admin to use. For example, the section on sites mentions site transitivity a few times, but no where in that section could I find any instructions on how to actually activate or deactivate that feature. After researching the issue myself, I found that all there is to that is a simple check box. Also, the sections on replication, GCs, and DNS needs more "meat." A few of the examples used in the book are just totally absurd and there are numerous little typographical errors throughout. Also, the ordering of the chapters are counterintuitive and some topics, such as GPOs, are covered in different, non-sequential, chapters of the book (the author does explain why that was done). Right now I am finishing up the scripting section and have found numerous inconsistencies with the sample code and the references to it. In one example, the author states that the code will update phone numbers while the code is actually updating (or attempts to update) pager numbers. Contrary to the author's statement that you don't need previous programming experience to learn scripting with this book, some of the examples involve functions and other programming techniques that are way too advanced for novice scripters. Conclusion:
If you want a practical book on AD, then get one geared towards MCSE certification - probably from Sybex. I even found the old Exam Cram book on AD to be rather useful and informative. I think the main goal of this book was to help the reader design an AD infrastructure, but it failed at that, as there was not enough "meat" in the book to cover that, and some of the examples were too absurd. The only part of the book that I did like was its decent explanation of AD object and attribute classes. As for the scripting part, it's mediocre thus far. I've been supplementing that with the very well written and easy to follow Windows 2000 Scripting Guide, (...).
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: Very good nuts and bolts guide to Active Directory. I've looked at a few other books on the topic and this is the best so far. The book takes a very logical approach toward describing all the complex details behind Active Directory. And as a bonus there are a bunch of chapters on scripting. The sample scripts were helpful. Even though AD is a very complicated beast, I think the authors did a good job in making it understandable. If you've never done anything with Windows before and want a very high-level introductory guide to AD, this book will probably have too many details for you. If you have even a little experience with NT4 or AD, then this book is a great reference!
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: Very good nuts and bolts guide to Active Directory. I've looked at a few other books on the topic and this is the best so far. The book takes a very logical approach toward describing all the complex details behind Active Directory. And as a bonus there are a bunch of chapters on scripting. The sample scripts were helpful. Even though AD is a very complicated beast, I think the authors did a good job in making it understandable. If you've never done anything with Windows before and want a very high-level introductory guide to AD, this book will probably have too many details for you. If you have even a little experience with NT4 or AD, then this book is a great reference!
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