Rating: 
Summary: Broad coverage for a broad audience
Review: Hal and Evan have produced an excellent overview of the field of reliable computer systems which is useful to system administrators, system architects and to non-technical people who need a general understanding of the field.As a system architect with a programming background facing the task of designing a simple highly reliable system this provided an excellent perspective on the different issues and technologies. It left me well prepared to then delve into the product literature of specific products that addressed the issues relevant to the project. I believe this would also be an excellent book for IT managers who are looking at commissioning a "high availability" system, whether from an external software integrator or an internal company IT department. In particular, it describes what is easily achievable, what is achievable only at great expense, and what is simply not doable. It also emphasises the roles and responsibilities of people involved in ongoing support of HA systems; this book clearly describes how creating such a system is not the end but the start of providing reliable services. The reading will be challenging for those of non-technical background, but the book keeps its focus on why you would use each technology rather than simply how each is applied, which makes it relevant to a wide range of readers. It should also ensure that this book remains useful even as technologies change. What this book does not do is provide a formula for setting up a system. It's a great first step, though. In addition the writing is clear, structure and flow are good and mistakes are few. Not the lightest of reads, but then again this is a serious topic about systems worth serious money. And at 550-odd pages of dense reading material, this book is well worth investing in.
Rating:
Summary: Pearls of Wisdom, Sage Advice and Doses of Reality
Review: High availability is almost like the Holy Grail - believers know it exists, but getting it can be a quest. Not that it's an elusive, impossible-to-achieve objective - it's just expensive and the path to high availability is filled with challenges, blind alleys and the risk of spending money on the wrong things. This book covers every conceivable aspect of high availability, from application recovery to the [Zen] of service level agreements. The emphasis is on the underlying technologies, with a good deal of attention paid to processes and business considerations as well. There are two things that stand out about this book: it is comprehensive and the authors are in-the-trenches technical types who can actually write. It is obvious that the authors have stuggled with and mastered every technology and technique about which they have written. This is a refreshing change from the plethora of technical books written by professional writers who are assigned book projects because they have writing ability, but not necessarily any real technical background. So, in a world that is littered with books with no substance, this gem is definitely worth buying. I am not going to rehash the table of contents, which is readily available on this page - I will say that the authors gave each of the topics excellent treatment on a number of levels. First, they have deleved into the mechanics of each topic, they have shown the strengths and weaknesses of each, and in many cases, have provided anecdotes and real-life stories about their experiences with designing and implementing similar solutions. The anecdotal content follows a pattern: it points out problems and how the authors resolved those problems when they encountered them. These alone make the book invaluable, and increase the credibility of the authors. Who should read this book? Systems engineers and managers. Systems engineers will benefit from the wealth of technical information provided in the book, and will also benefit from the excellent explanations of underlying mechanics of how the various technologies and solution sets work. I am sure that most systems engineers will find the book's many anecdotes to be entertaining reading that imparts valuable information. Managers should read this book because it puts into perspective how various pieces of a high availability solution set fits together. It also provides a dose of reality that might just stop some "suit" from decreeing a technical direction without fully understanding the full set of issues and factors. This book will provide the issues and factors to managers in a readable manner.
Rating:
Summary: Even better than the first edition!
Review: I bought the first edition of this book, and it became so dog-eared from everyone borrowing it that I was about to order another, when I saw there was a secodn edition. This one is even better that the first. If you need action items and you need set-up help for providing the kind of network your boss wants and needs, this is the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinarily useful book
Review: I must first confess to being a colleague of sorts of Evan's--I work in the same company (VERITAS Software), but in a different part. I'll also confess to having bought the book (yes, I bought it) more out of curiosity than out of an immediate need for the information it contains. Having said that, I will go on to say that I am pleased with my purchase. This book is great, not because of the detail it contains in any one area, but because it tells you what all the areas are that you need to be concerned with if you're implementing a highly available system. Lots of books answer questions on how to implement this or that aspect of high availability; what's much less common is a book like this that you can use as a check list to see if you have all the bases covered. It doesn't go into great detail on any single topic, but it gives you enough meat to make informed decisions in the less technical areas (like staff, training, etc.) and to send you searching for more detail in the more technical areas (like backup, RAID, and clustering). I'll pay Evan and Hal another compliment. I own many more technical books than I have read. I didn't really expect to read this book, just because I don't read most of the books I buy all the way through. What I found, however, is that this book sort of creeps up on you. You read a little, and a little more. You put it down, only to pick it up later. The information is very well organized and chapters are self-contained. You can pretty much open it anywhere and have an informative read for 15 minutes, for an hour, or whatever time you have to give it. It's obvious that both authors bring lots of hands on experience to this book. The "Tales from the Field" anecdotal sidebars are worth the price of the book by themselves. I wish I could bring these guys to bear when I have HA problems. If I can't, I'll at least have their book at my side.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't panic
Review: I'm a German reader, who has to deal with HA, writing and publishing about HA and to be aware of loosing all SCSI devices at once because of an electic accident. Everyone who hangs on HA will be glad that there is a new book available. Most of them are from the last decade. The book is clearly structured. You can put it away and open it later by reading the conclusions to get the lost thread again. And it`s humorous: I'm shure the the small hearts may have been helpfull for John, George, Paul and Ringo to play together in 1-to-4 environment. Something that's unusual (in Europe) when you read books about dry hard stuff like HA. Everyone, who has to manage resilience system should have this book and the "20 keys system design principles" should be plugged on the door - the operational part of the book. But there is a drop of bitterness: the chart of "Causes of Downtime" (from 1995) and "Costs of Downtime" (1996) should be newer -- as time goes by. At least, I miss some word in the Index. There are new solutions working, which don't have to be based on Sun systems -- like Linux? But my message to Evan and Hal: go on, we'll need those experiences as printed in the book "tales from the field".
Rating:
Summary: Demystifying High Availability In The New Age of Technology
Review: It isn't often that a single book can deliver solutions to so many issues that plague enterprise executives and system administrators alike, but this book delivers the goods. Most technology related documents focus on the low-level gorp that makes up complex solutions, but this book provides information at all levels. The focus of the information is made clear through the use of real-world examples, and research that must have taken years to assemble. As well, there are mathematical formulas that help one determine how outages can effect a global enterprise or even a small business. The authors even had the forethought to end the book with a look into future technologies that may solve some of the more complex issues that elude even the most expert of solution architects.
Rating:
Summary: Candid HA for amateur or pro...
Review: Messrs. Marcus and Stern have created a book that works for the seasoned sysadmin as well as the HA newbie. Frank depictions of case studies provide helpful insight into the many pitfalls of creating HA solutions. The "key points" sections at the end of each chapter provide quick and easy checkpoints should a reference refresher be required. Another excellent trait of this book is its readability and realistic approach to the HA "art". The mixture of pure philosophy tempered with daily reality provided me at least, with more certainty in finding the best overall balance of reliability, availability, and manageability vs. things like cost of ownership, etc. There is an excellent level of technical proficiency treated in the text as well. The hardcore bits and bytes folk won't be dissappointed by Mr. Stern's treatment various scenarios. The attention Mr. Marcus pays to higher level structural detail also makes you say occasionally, "gee i would have never thought of that.". (And even if you had, i doubt you would have been able to elaborate on it as humorously.) :) It's one of the few books i refer back to occasionally, (not so surprisingly, this goes for Mr. Stern's Managing NIS/NFS book as well). Overall, it's just an extremely invaluable book that's actually a good read as well. (love the "Tales from the field" blurbs). I don't believe there's any stone regarding HA left unturned by this book. Replication, DR, backup and restores...it's all there. I look forward to their next collaborative effort.
Rating:
Summary: More than just Technology
Review: One of the most interesting things about this book is that it treats the subject of availability as more then just a technology issue. It goes into areas such aas basic good systems admin practices, Physical placement of equipment, building and facility services. Availabilty is more then just Raid disks, HA software and redundant hardware. They do a very good job explaining all aspects of HA, and giving interesting real world examples in thier short interludes. The new last chapters adds a lot of relevence, exploring sept 11th and its effect on trading. A good informative read.
Rating: 
Summary: High Availability is an end to end proposition.
Review: Our book starts from a very simple premise; we call it our mission statement: "You cannot achieve High Availability (HA) by simply installing failover software, and walking away." Highly available systems are predictable, that is, they behave with consistent response time and recovery time, and can be managed consistently, as the load placed on them increases. This level of predictable, continuous computing can only be achieved by solving the problem at multiple layers. In this book, we start from the core of a single system and work our way "out" to an end to end approach. At the heart of the design is failover software and disk redundancy techniques. Failover software, or HA software, such as Microsoft Cluster Server, VERITAS Cluster Server, or Sun Cluster, quickly and smoothly transfers control from a failed computer to a predesignated standby, allowing it to take over the functions of the first. From there, we cover network design, network services such as naming, directory and filesystems, and system software functions like databases and web servers that run on these highly available platforms. We also talk about replication and application-level issues that require careful consideration. Failovers will not help you recover from poor system or network performance, network outages, buggy software, full disks and filesystems, human error, poor design, and a bunch of other potential pitfalls. We take a detailed look these and other causes of system downtime. We discuss protective measures that you can take to eliminate them, or at least to minimize their impact. Since some system outages are inevitable, we outline design rules for your systems so that you know how long each common kind outage will last, and so you can set user expectations accordingly. Our goal is to let you look at the problem of availability from the perspective of a developer, a systems manager, an architect, or, yes, even a technical manager. The book is neither a Windows or a Unix book. Our advice, and most of our examples, apply equally to both environments. Good design techniques apply to all environments. Thank you for your interest in our book. We are very proud of it, and we believe that it can help you design systems that deliver on the promise of increased availability.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fair Introduction - not much depth
Review: The book gives a reasonable introduction to the aspects of HA system design, but does not really provide much guidance in terms of making actual design decisions. Some of the data points are also very out of date.
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