Windows 2000 DNS (Landmark)

Rating:
Summary: This Book Begins Badly
Review: Four working computer professionals with only one, prior, published book between them have combined on this April 2000 work on Windows 2000 DNS. I have only read the first 35 pages of the 444 pages in this book. I hope it gets better.

In the midst of installing Windows 2000 in a small but complex enterprise, I brought this book home on a weekend for what I expected would be an enjoyable opportunity to dig a little deeper into DNS. It wasn't any fun.

The introductory chapter of seventeen pages is written with little style, is poorly organized, has screen shots too small to read, fails to state the importance and significance of DNS for the Windows platform, and has an egregious error. According to one of the authors, "..the theoretical minimum [number of DNS servers] is one DNS server for each branch in the domain name tree." The theoretical minimum is one as better explained by another of the authors a few pages later.

Chapter two plunges into details for which the reader is unprepared by the introductory chapter. Please define more precisely what "domain" means in the Windows 2000 architecture before throwing it about so carelessly in nearly every paragraph. It is just not possible to talk about the details of DNS without understanding the basic architectures contemplated using Windows 2000's forests, trees, domains and organizational units.

I am sure that the book, by its sheer weight, will fill in the many holes in my knowledge of DNS. But, if you are not already well-read on Active Directory Services in Windows 2000, which depends on DNS for locator services, this book is not the place to start.

Rating:
Summary: Plenty of info, poorly written & organized.
Review: I echo others' sentiments: this book contains some great information, but uses a very poor writing style. Regardless of any technical book's level of quality content, a poor writing style can render it useless. The authors--in their commendable attempt to include the most minute details of DNS--ramble on incessantly (sometimes incoherently), leaving the reader dazed & confused. There is some great information here, but I find myself reading passages 3-4 times to understand the concepts. This book could've had great potential, but the editor was asleep at the wheel.

Rating:
Summary: A major disappointment
Review: I purchased this with the idea of walking through it to setup a test server environment with multiple zones and domain names. This book goes on and on about concepts of how it all works, but never gets down to the bottom line of - setup your domain this way and this is how the domain appears and how to access from the Internet. Do yourself a favor and find another book.

Rating:
Summary: Steer Clear of this one!
Review: The negative reviews of this book comes from the author's banal and subtle writing style. The author is not a bad writer, he is just too subtle. Unfortunately, such writing style is not the best for emphasizing important ideas.

The funny thing about this book is that it APPEARS useless when it is jampacked with extremely useful information. Even though I read this book 7 months ago, I did not appreciate this book until recently when I had to put together a Windows 2000 DNS environment. It is highly informative will teach you some advance DNS topics. It has a surprisingly good chapter on security as well. Although this will NOT be the only DNS book I would buy, it certainly explains many aspects of Windows 2000 DNS better than any book I have read, and I own total of 4 DNS books.

I particularly liked the author's explaination of Active Directory Integrated DNS and DHCP + DDNS interaction.

Rating:
Summary: All you need to know about Windows 2000 DNS
Review: This book does an excellent job of covering Microsoft's latest version of DNS. The book covers many of the details of DNS services from the foundations of DNS to the implementation as put forth by Microsoft. A certain amount of knowledge about Windows 2000 and Active Directory is required to follow much of the book, but this is to be expected (and rightfully so) from a specialty book.

Successful Windows 2000 deployments, and Active Directory implementations, will require a solid DNS solution. This book provides all the information needed to successfully deploy Windows 2000 DNS, including integration with existing DNS servers.

The authors provide helpful guidelines for "best practices" and system maintenance issues. They also cover legacy support issues for WINS and other "downlevel" situations.

This book is a very complete reference and guide to understanding the importance of DNS to the Windows 2000 system administrator. It would be an excellent addition to any System Administrator's reference library.

Rating:
Summary: Good Information, but Terrible writing
Review: This is a great DNS book - to rival the DNS and Bind book by O'Reilly. Like the Bind book, this one gives a basic understanding of how DNS works, but it explains it in terms of Windows 2000 rather than Unix like the O'Reilly book. It gives some great practical examples. I work in customer support, supporting network and system administrators and every customer who calls with a DNS question, I recommend this book.

One review in Amazon said it doesn't do a good job of explaining Active Directory - but AD is not in the realm of DNS - you need other sources to see how AD works.

Rating:
Summary: Great for Setup short on Explanations
Review: This is a hard book for me to rate. On the one hand this book had enough information and examples to make it easy for me to upgrade our DNS Server to Windows 2000, setup a separate Windows 2000 DNS Server at a satellite office from scratch, add a Secondary DNS Server for the Network. The book also has plenty of information on different settings for DNS and how to make it work with DHCP and WINS. Lot's of info on maintenance tools and commands and how they work. However I felt the book really missed being a great book by not completely explaining how DNS works. There just isn't enough written on how and why it works and not nearly enough examples. Like I said it is hard to say because maybe the full explanations and more examples would just be overkill or in the end they don't help with setup but just confuse. So if you want info on how to setup a DNS Server on Windows 2000 this is the book for you, If you want to know how DNS works across the internet and interacts with other operating systems and networks I have to say look elsewhere.