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Rating: 
Summary: If you are serious about HA....
Review: .. you need this book (2nd edition). There are no products that provide availability for the entire enterprise.
Most HA products are point products and even those that claim to be general purpose are selectively deployed because they are either too costly and/or difficult to deploy. And none of the general purpose HA products scale to handle current trends with racks of blade servers and SANs.
Basically, if you are serious about HA you need to glue many technologies together and this book covers it all. In many cases it won't show you exactly how to do it since the book is vendor neutral. But more importantly, it provides the essential background information you'll need from selecting storage technologies to deploying disaster recovery plans -- and everything in between.
Rating:
Summary: One of the few books I'm actually PROUD to own
Review: An excellent overview of high availability techniques. Starts with "why and how much HA do you need", and goes all the way through the hardware and design side of HA. Doesn't describe any product in details, the authors explicitly refrain from doing so. Instead, the book makes you think the right way by pointing at the actual problems and offering actual decisions. Upon reading this book you can easily answer the question "what can we do to make it work", not "what brand of server should we buy". Covers HA theory, redundant hardware, redundant systems design, failover techniques, replication, backups, procedures, disaster recovery. The only thing that I didn't like and still can remember (a year later that I've read it), is that in my opinion the authors should stay totally clear off the "how to write a stable software" side of HA. There is like 2 pages of that, and it doesn't sound like anything sane. Clear language. Solid visual design. Lots of (fun and) real-life samples. See the title of the review.
Rating:
Summary: One of the few books I'm actually PROUD to own
Review: An excellent overview of high availability techniques. Starts with "why and how much HA do you need", and goes all the way through the hardware and design side of HA. Doesn't describe any product in details, the authors explicitly refrain from doing so. Instead, the book makes you think the right way by pointing at the actual problems and offering actual decisions. Upon reading this book you can easily answer the question "what can we do to make it work", not "what brand of server should we buy". Covers HA theory, redundant hardware, redundant systems design, failover techniques, replication, backups, procedures, disaster recovery. The only thing that I didn't like and still can remember (a year later that I've read it), is that in my opinion the authors should stay totally clear off the "how to write a stable software" side of HA. There is like 2 pages of that, and it doesn't sound like anything sane. Clear language. Solid visual design. Lots of (fun and) real-life samples. See the title of the review.
Rating: 
Summary: Design Your Own
Review: Anyone who has ever worked with me in the past knows I'm somewhat of an availability freak. It is the mark of a network administrator's excellence if they can say they maintain a 99.75% availability rating. High Availability as a design concept has kind of been brushed off to the side in recent years. This book was written is 2000 and at that time I think I bought about three books on the subject. Nothing new has been written about it. During the year 2000 there was a lot of discussion about availability in the private sector since a company like Amazon.com or any other on-line retailer lost big bucks if they were down for just minutes. Availability rating was the most important benchmark of a company's network. This book is my favorite on the subject because it is easy to understand. Cisco published a book on availability and you had to be a CCIE to understand the Introduction. This book is easy to read and marked with good illustrations to emphasize things like RAID, SANs, redundant routing, etc. Hardware companies have built servers, hard drives, controllers, etc. with high availability in mind so for the network administrator it is no longer critical for them to understand or be able to explain availability. However, high availability as a design concept is still the standard and once you understand how it all works and what the difference between 99% versus 99.75% availability you can take steps to maintain that high availability of your network systems.
Rating:
Summary: More on the relationship between security issues and HA
Review: as I was reading this otherwise excellent book, I noticed that there was a very important theme (to my understanding), which wasn't honored enough attention; namely, issues relating to the 'Secure Socket Layer' protocol and availability, which directly translates to money coming your or someone else's way. How does it affect the HA and your web applications architecture? SSL Certificates in a HA setting? . . . etc. All diagrams would present the web farm directly facing the internet!? I even stopped reading and went to the index looking for it and found that there were indeed two -very basic- blurbs on it on pages 301 and 352. I know security is a theme by itself, but the relationship between security issues and HA is way too fundamental to simply skim over them. As a matter of fact I would say that number one issue affecting HA is security. Also the book has a very SA oriented (am I talking about another book already? ;-)) style. I would like to read a little more about 'the Physics' of it. For example, cosmic rays' (I am not joking), like neutrinos, influence on the proper/stable functioning of computers is greater than the, comparatively speaking, very anomalous 'split brain' types of errors and more on, electric accidents, the effective use of ECC memory. Should it go in the Web servers, too, in addition to the data centers? Why? Cabling and electromagnetic inductance issues are mentioned in the 'Tales from the Field', but I could see some people expecting a more rounding explanation/solution to the 'tales'. In the case in which they talk about a java web server people might have the impression that 'Java' or its use in a web server was wrong, which
I could tell was most probably not the case, but the use of JSP without specifying the sessions shouldn't be automatically created, which is the default many developers forget.
Rating:
Summary: More on the relationship between security issues and HA
Review: as I was reading this otherwise excellent book, I noticed that there was a very important theme (to my understanding), which wasn't honored enough attention; namely, issues relating to the `Secure Socket Layer' protocol and availability, which directly translates to money coming your or someone else's way. How does it affect the HA and your web applications architecture? SSL Certificates in a HA setting? . . . etc. All diagrams would present the web farm directly facing the internet!? I even stopped reading and went to the index looking for it and found that there were indeed two -very basic- blurbs on it on pages 301 and 352. I know security is a theme by itself, but the relationship between security issues and HA is way too fundamental to simply skim over them. As a matter of fact I would say that number one issue affecting HA is security. Also the book has a very SA oriented (am I talking about another book already? ;-)) style. I would like to read a little more about `the Physics' of it. For example, cosmic rays' (I am not joking), like neutrinos, influence on the proper/stable functioning of computers is greater than the, comparatively speaking, very anomalous `split brain' types of errors and more on, electric accidents, the effective use of ECC memory. Should it go in the Web servers, too, in addition to the data centers? Why? Cabling and electromagnetic inductance issues are mentioned in the `Tales from the Field', but I could see some people expecting a more rounding explanation/solution to the `tales'. In the case in which they talk about a java web server people might have the impression that `Java' or its use in a web server was wrong, which
I could tell was most probably not the case, but the use of JSP without specifying the sessions shouldn't be automatically created, which is the default many developers forget.
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: 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: 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: Even better than the first edition!
Review: Very good coverage of HA issues. Many people get a warm fuzzy having one piece of kit that is "reliable" or "redundant". To get substantial gains in availability requires a more complete systems view. This book reviews many aspects, and paths that can be taken towards increasing availability. I heartily recommended this book.
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