Rating: 
Summary: Review Summary
Review: Having read the last 4 reviews I see that the book is rated two ways... Great (5 stars) by users who don't do HP-UX Admin everyday...are just getting into it and want all the essentials explained in one place.Bad (2 stars), by those who have moved on, so to speak, and know most of the material already. Maybe the author needs to figure out which audience he wants to write for.
Rating:
Summary: Hoped it would be better.
Review: I bought this book hoping it would help me with my job and to some extent it has. The book presents material specific to HP-UX systems and seems written for intermediate to advanced users so someone, who is a novice like myself, may seem a bit overwhelmed. Experienced users may find that out of the 1147 pages they only reference a few. Most of the examples presented are basic, or are from the man pages, which to me, are not very helpful. The simple and sparse examples in the book, and the structure of the man pages, has never worked well with my personal learning style and because of that, I've often had to write my own documentation for myself, co-workers, and clients. There are some errors throughout the book and at least one page is scrambled. A co-worker bought a copy of this book from another source and it has the same errors. In my particular job, I have never found a need for the included CD, but others may find it useful. I would recommend looking at other books on HP-UX before buying this one.
Rating:
Summary: Hoped it would be better.
Review: I bought this book hoping it would help me with my job and to some extent it has. The book presents material specific to HP-UX systems and seems written for intermediate to advanced users so someone, who is a novice like myself, may seem a bit overwhelmed. Experienced users may find that out of the 1147 pages they only reference a few. Most of the examples presented are basic, or are from the man pages, which to me, are not very helpful. The simple and sparse examples in the book, and the structure of the man pages, has never worked well with my personal learning style and because of that, I've often had to write my own documentation for myself, co-workers, and clients. There are some errors throughout the book and at least one page is scrambled. A co-worker bought a copy of this book from another source and it has the same errors. In my particular job, I have never found a need for the included CD, but others may find it useful. I would recommend looking at other books on HP-UX before buying this one.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent book for the beginner HP-UX Admin.
Review: I found this book to be an excellent guide for someone relatively new to HP-UX administration. The book does a good job of breaking down available commands for each function and telling you in a concise but clear manner what each command is for. For example for file system commands it provides: extendfs: Use this command after lvextend. Whereas the lvextend command expands the logical volume, extendfs expands the file system within the logical volume. if you forget to issue the extendfs command, the logical volume inside SAM will look expanded, but issuing the bdf command will not show the expansion. In addition it provides the man pages for each command listed in a chapter. Some may say you don't need to pay for this as man pages are free. However I found it very useful if I wanted to read a man page while doing a command. In addition it is much easier on your eyes to read a printed man page instead of online. The book walks you through seting up an HP-UX system, bulding the file system, putting it on the network, running auditing and backing up and recovering a system. In addition it shows you how SAM, glance plus, and perfview work. The book provides you a chapter on VI, which is often a source of major head aches for people new to Unix. It also provides a chapter on scripting to help you when you need to write or modify a shell script. Over all I am very happy with this book and can recommend it to any HP-UX admins outside of the "greybeard" experts.
Rating:
Summary: SEASONED ADMINS SAVE YOUR MONEY, ANOTHER MARTY BOOK
Review: If your are a beginner to UNIX, then buy this book. If you are not do not buy this book online, go to the bookstore to look first. This book is a clone of the HPUX 10.X SYS ADMIN HANDBOOK & TOOLKIT. If you have that book and man pages installed(a hefty amount of pages are copies of man pages) you will learn little from the 11.X book. The most useful chapter is chapter 4, which covers performance issues fairly well. Also, note that Chap 1 does point some useful platform issues. He covers his specialty, SAM very well again, however, if you are a seasoned admin you will gain little. This book would have been 11X better if Marty had inserted 'notes', or some kind of a pointer stating certain items that were different from 10.X or tips for 11X. Like what they do in Solaris books. You have to read redundant information from the 10.X Handbook to gain anything. My opinion. Hell, if your company will pay for it, buy it. Lets pray Jay Shah will write another HPUX book in the near future. Joe Holbrook, CET, CNST Certified HP Technical Professional
Rating:
Summary: The same book again
Review: It's OK to write a book when enough material changes where the book is updated and reissued (ie; 2nd edition) or where there is additional material that goes beyound the original material, or when there is new material. Marty's book does not fit into the above definations; he keeps republishing the same book and changing the title, adding a little more material each time. If you look at each book he published...they get thicker and thicker. And he's included MAN pages as a substantial part of the book now...which I have to pay for if I buy it. The only reason to buy this book...is to get the best version of the same material he's been writing about for the last several years. Everytime I consider buying the book I can't make it the checkout counter...I just can't see buying the book that is essential the same book as two or three other books I already bought....there's something almost unethical about presenting the same writings under a different title. As an SA/Consultant who worked at a number of sites...and have seen real "horror stories" regarding the misconfiguration of systems that run into the millions of dollars.....systems that are in places Marty visits and works on....I'd wish he'd write about that stuff...as it is far more interesting than what he's writing about now.
Rating: 
Summary: A very complete and detailed book
Review: That prolific writer, Marty Poniatowski, has done a great job with his latest book "HP-UX 11.X SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION - Handbook and Toolkit". Marty describes in detail, the new features of HP-UX 11.0 and explains them with clarity. To give you an example of the detail, Marty uses up 140 pages of this 1150 page book covering SAM. You will learn all of SAM's features, including some poorly documented ones such as "restricted SAM". Mr. Poniatowski covers how to use SAM to manage device files as well as the command line approach. Especially useful, are the 150 pages devoted to NT/HP-UX interoperability. Salient topics covered include printer and file system sharing, and Microsoft Services for Unix. There is some excellent information on how to supplement your disaster recovery process and backup procedures using IGNITE/UX. The performance tools and benchmarking section is very thorough, with detailed examples and illustrations of MeasureWare and PerfView. I believe this book is an excellent addition to HP's fine education program, as he not only teaches the mechanics of doing something but also explains the "why's" of system administration. Some of these include...why audit?.....why is security important?.... why you want to configure a dump device. There was a lot of ergonomics that went into this publication. Besides being chock full of illustrations and examples, the fonts are large and easy on your eyes, while the included man pages are smaller, as to save space. A tear-off vi "cheat sheet" is included as well as a CD-ROM that has 60 day trial copies of EXCEED, MAESTRO, PERFVIEW, MEASUREWARE, and docs. The targeted audience is from the beginner to the near-guru. I've been working with HP-UX for over 12 years, and I've learned quite a bit from this publication.
Rating:
Summary: A very complete and detailed book
Review: That prolific writer, Marty Poniatowski, has done a great job with his latest book "HP-UX 11.X SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION - Handbook and Toolkit". Marty describes in detail, the new features of HP-UX 11.0 and explains them with clarity. To give you an example of the detail, Marty uses up 140 pages of this 1150 page book covering SAM. You will learn all of SAM's features, including some poorly documented ones such as "restricted SAM". Mr. Poniatowski covers how to use SAM to manage device files as well as the command line approach. Especially useful, are the 150 pages devoted to NT/HP-UX interoperability. Salient topics covered include printer and file system sharing, and Microsoft Services for Unix. There is some excellent information on how to supplement your disaster recovery process and backup procedures using IGNITE/UX. The performance tools and benchmarking section is very thorough, with detailed examples and illustrations of MeasureWare and PerfView. I believe this book is an excellent addition to HP's fine education program, as he not only teaches the mechanics of doing something but also explains the "why's" of system administration. Some of these include...why audit?.....why is security important?.... why you want to configure a dump device. There was a lot of ergonomics that went into this publication. Besides being chock full of illustrations and examples, the fonts are large and easy on your eyes, while the included man pages are smaller, as to save space. A tear-off vi "cheat sheet" is included as well as a CD-ROM that has 60 day trial copies of EXCEED, MAESTRO, PERFVIEW, MEASUREWARE, and docs. The targeted audience is from the beginner to the near-guru. I've been working with HP-UX for over 12 years, and I've learned quite a bit from this publication.
Rating:
Summary: Landed me a job!
Review: The HP-UX 11.x Sys Admin Handbook and Toolkit is the catalyst that landed me a HP-UX poistion at HP. In partiular the networking and HP-UX proprietary chapters were really easy to go through and well thought out and written. I came to HP with an edge and this but gave me that edge. In fact, I use this book at least once a week as a reference guide to help with work.
GREAT BOOK!
Rating:
Summary: Great for Reference before and during the job
Review: This book is an excellent companion to the HP Manual: "Installing HP-UX 11.0 and Updating HP-UX 10.x to 11.0". This manual is normally printed from the HP-UX 11.0 CDROM. I've used it in setting up a number of HP-UX 11.0 systems to clarify a number of installation items. I like his treatment of the Advanced Menu installation items that are used during installation. Author exhibits a great attitude which is reflected in the the writing of his book. "You are going to have a great time setting up your HP-UX system(s). I know you are, because I have set up hundreds and hundreds of systems and my customers always enjoy it." The book seems redundant in some parts but his goal is for you to get "the common denominator of HP-UX system administration knowledge that applies to all systems." The additional inserted "man" pages relieve the tedium of bring up the man screen on the monitor. You do get a little tired of sometimes 8 to 10 hrs a day looking in man pages on the screen. It is a well known physical/psychology fact that you read a printed page better and faster than the tube. Especially when you have to go back and forth. These parts can be easily skipped if you have memorized some of them as I have through constant use. The scripts are easy to use and convert to your installation practices. Some of the customization feature tips described are very thoughtful. I understand that the author is going to put these scripts on a web site or in a CDROM in the near future. Love the script to use in checking instant ignition and displaying all the patches (why did I think of doing it that way? ). Nevertheless, typing them in is a good way to learn or refresh your memory of UNIX techniques. The review of shell programming is also good if you need a refresher course and don't have a lot of time. The description of HP Performance tools when you need them is very handy. None of us really have enough time to research all the features and he make them very easy to use. His description and uses of the UNIX directory structures is good enough to explain to your upper management when you want to modify or add to these. I can't remember where else I've seen such a nice job. I can't do justice to the book and it's features. He doesn't forget those of us who have to be using the 700 series machines in addition to the bigger K4XX machines. He gives enough information to make your own way if you are experienced with the machines. Some customers want to still put HP-UX 11.0 on 700 series machines.
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