Description:
So this technician who's worked out in the field for a while comes over to your house to help you pass the Server+ exam. Being a techie, he naturally lapses into bursts of dense technospeak once in awhile, but most of the time he explains things in a chatty, easy-to-understand manner. He peppers his explanations with real-life examples and touches on political pitfalls, rambling through various technologies and pausing occasionally to gripe about a program error or a common mistake that people make--but it's a friendly talk, informative and at your level. At the end of the day, you come away with solid knowledge of the underlying concepts, which should be enough to get you a pass. If you have some networking experience under your belt (namely, an A+ exam or a basic understanding of Ethernet and wiring), then that's exactly what the Server+ Exam Prep feels like--a talk from a tech. The writing is topnotch, explaining the concepts with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of clarity. The book goes well beyond the scope of the Server+ exam objectives--a fact that may annoy some--but almost always stays firmly based in reality, telling you things that are likely to come up during the course of a sysadmin's day. The Server+ Exam Prep doesn't just look at hardware, but also considers budgets, political factors, and building architecture. Furthermore, the book almost invariably informs you when it's going off the rails, so you can always skip the nonessential stuff when you want--but in general, the digressions add to your knowledge, giving you a greater understanding of why certain things are important to the well-being of your server. The organization, however, is a little spotty and is likely to confuse some readers--for example, the book discusses RAID technology extensively in one chapter but doesn't suitably explain what RAID is until later in the guide. Likewise, the book also assumes that the reader also knows some important concepts: it talks about the importance of wearing an ESD strap several times but never says how to wear one safely, and the importance of getting a solid baseline--a critical task for sysadmins--isn't stressed nearly enough. And some topics are compacted into a dense black hole of technobabble that may require rereading several times; the introductory discussions on SCSI types, TCP/IP, and basic networking concepts stand out in particular as having a high "huh?" factor for people not in the know. Still, these are minor kvetches with a book that has solid features that others lack--a good, solid section on troubleshooting, a fine disaster-planning chapter, and a very in-depth discussion on what factors go into making a good server environment. What is troubling, however, is the paucity and quality of the sample test questions. The questions given are cotton candy compared to what you can expect to see on the actual exam, mostly being simple multiple-choice questions that can be answered flawlessly after a single read-through. Practically no "scenario" questions are given, and the book commits the cardinal sin of allowing multiple answers on certain questions without making it clear that you're supposed to choose more than one. Still, the answers are explained in some detail at the back of the book, which is more than some guides do. Taking some online Server+ exams before you do the real test is definitely recommended in this case. In short, this is an excellent introductory book and will probably get you through the exam without a hitch. The weakness of the questions is overcome by the overall strength of the writing and the clarity with which it hammers concepts home. At the price, it's hard to go wrong with this. --William Steinmetz
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