Rating: 
Summary: Best book in its class.
Review: If you are looking for a fundamentals book on Unix or Windows 2000 operating systems, go elsewhere. This book is completely about the methodologies for architecting, running and maintaining your IT data center. It's the best book in its class hands down.
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly useful
Review: If you're an experienced SysAdmin, then you will have already learned most of the hard lessons this book can help you avoid, but it can still be valuable to sit down and see them all presented in one place. Almost universally this book covers the "right way" to do things, and will essentially never become outdated, since it avoids discussion of any particular technologies (for the most part).If you're new to system administration, then this book is your bible. Read it, digest it, and use its ideas in your work every day and you will be light years ahead of other sysadmins, who will be learning all of these lessons the hard way. As for complaints about this book not having implementation ideas, of course it doesn't; the red book (now purple) or the O'Reilly book is perfectly good for that, that's not the point at all of this book. This book is discussing a methodology for system administration, not a nuts and bolts reference. It's can't be the only book about system administration on your desktop, but it should _definitely_ be there.
Rating:
Summary: Wow Wow Wow!
Review: Looking at the reviews under 4 stars, the reader clearly had a wrong idea about what to expect, or they don't realize how important it is to apply the ideas in this book. I am using this book as an independent study toward my Masters in Computer Science at Creighton University. I have had to write 3-6 page reports on every chapter. And then answer in detail every excercise question. I know this book well. If you run your IT department based on these principles, you are on the way to CTO or CEO. I cannot stress how good his ideas are and how important it is to implement in your organization. I have no doubt that the Celestial Kingdom's IT department uses this as an SA biblical reference. By the way, the author(s) is/are not my friends. Thanks for reading. Vote me to the top please.
Rating:
Summary: Wow Wow Wow!
Review: Looking at the reviews under 4 stars, the reader clearly had a wrong idea about what to expect, or they don't realize how important it is to apply the ideas in this book. I am using this book as an independent study toward my Masters in Computer Science at Creighton University. I have had to write 3-6 page reports on every chapter. And then answer in detail every excercise question. I know this book well. If you run your IT department based on these principles, you are on the way to CTO or CEO. I cannot stress how good his ideas are and how important it is to implement in your organization. I have no doubt that the Celestial Kingdom's IT department uses this as an SA biblical reference. By the way, the author(s) is/are not my friends. Thanks for reading. Vote me to the top please.
Rating:
Summary: teaches you what you REALLY need to know
Review: Sysadmining isn't about learning bash really well or memorizing raid levels, this book really goes into what you need to know to be a systems admin.
Rating:
Summary: The "whys" of building an enterprise infrastructure
Review: System administration books tend to focus on how to accomplish particular, important tasks - along with providing background information on computers, networks, and services. Those books are tremendously valuable, because they centralize information and often explain system details that documentation leaves out. But this book is different. It explains how to build and maintain a computer network - servers, workstations, network devices - and explains how to make decisions based on your requirements, not just how to make things work. Making things work is very important. But to be a world-class network administrator, you've got to understand how to make decisions, and how to weigh options. This fabulous book takes you into the problem solving, decision making minds of two experienced administrators. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to go past twiddling configurations into the realm of building a useable, stable, maintainable enterprise network.
Rating:
Summary: A Mentor in a Book
Review: The book market is flooded with books that will tell you all about the technical details of administering various software products and operating systems. Their scope is usually limited to whatever technical product is being written about and they become outdated as quickly as the technology becomes outdated. This book is very different. It gives guidelines in a very readable, coaching style, that can be applied to many different aspects of the System Administration trade.
I have been a System Administrator for a few years now, but this book clarifies many of the issues that I work with daily. It's like a having a mentor on my bookshelf that I can pull down and consult for advice. I especially like the whole section of seven chapters dealing with different aspects of management. These chapters should be mandatory reading for every SA -- and their bosses.
The book is written in a very readable style and has many useful and insightful real-world examples that show that the authors have been around and learned a lot on the way. The book is worth reading just for these examples. I read the book from cover to cover.
I first heard about this book when I attended a seminar Tom Limoncelli
taught at the 2003 LISA conference titled "Time Management for System Administrators: How to Keep from Going (More) Crazy". Many of the topics in the seminar are covered in detail in the book.
If you're a system administrator, you should read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome!
Review: The Practice of System and Network Administration shows you how to become a great SA.
This is no 'for dummies' book.
The Practice of System and Network Administration is a great guide.
Rating:
Summary: Systems Administration as a Liberal Art
Review: The thing about this book is that it's a theoretical treatise on systems administration as a discipline in and of itself. There's no other book like it on the market, and Limoncelli and Hogan do a great job of showing us the core competencies and knowledge that define a systems administrator, the knowledge that has nothing to do with what specific systems or networks we're actually running. Up until now, the only way you'd get this knowledge was if you were lucky enough to apprentice under an experienced systems administrator or if you read between the lines of other systems administration books, and figured out the metaknowledge contained in their lists of commands to type and single platform descriptions. If you're a new sysadmin starting out, reading this book will give you the edge that would take at least 5-10 years on the job to get--and only a few sysadmins who attack the job from more of an academic perspective will get. It's mostly a book about how to think, much like a liberal arts education teaches you how to think. Perhaps the liberal arts background of the authors is showing a bit. If you're an experienced sysadmin, you still probably haven't put it all together this way before. If you're a manager, you need to read both the chapters on how to manage sysadmins, as well as the chapters that tell what your sysadmins will be doing to get what they want from you. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in systems administration as a discipline, science, art, career, or job function.
Rating:
Summary: Systems Administration as a Liberal Art
Review: The thing about this book is that it's a theoretical treatise on systems administration as a discipline in and of itself. There's no other book like it on the market, and Limoncelli and Hogan do a great job of showing us the core competencies and knowledge that define a systems administrator, the knowledge that has nothing to do with what specific systems or networks we're actually running. Up until now, the only way you'd get this knowledge was if you were lucky enough to apprentice under an experienced systems administrator or if you read between the lines of other systems administration books, and figured out the metaknowledge contained in their lists of commands to type and single platform descriptions. If you're a new sysadmin starting out, reading this book will give you the edge that would take at least 5-10 years on the job to get--and only a few sysadmins who attack the job from more of an academic perspective will get. It's mostly a book about how to think, much like a liberal arts education teaches you how to think. Perhaps the liberal arts background of the authors is showing a bit. If you're an experienced sysadmin, you still probably haven't put it all together this way before. If you're a manager, you need to read both the chapters on how to manage sysadmins, as well as the chapters that tell what your sysadmins will be doing to get what they want from you. I highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in systems administration as a discipline, science, art, career, or job function.
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