A Mentor in a Book   August 29, 2004

Best book in its class.   November 11, 2002

Incredibly useful   October 4, 2002

As for complaints about this book not having implementation ideas, of course it doesn't; the red book (now purple) or the O'Reilly book is perfectly good for that, that's not the point at all of this book. This book is discussing a methodology for system administration, not a nuts and bolts reference. It's can't be the only book about system administration on your desktop, but it should _definitely_ be there.


Wow Wow Wow!   August 8, 2002
  15 out of 21 found this review helpful

Looking at the reviews under 4 stars, the reader clearly had a wrong idea about what to expect, or they don't realize how important it is to apply the ideas in this book. I am using this book as an independent study toward my Masters in Computer Science at Creighton University. I have had to write 3-6 page reports on every chapter. And then answer in detail every excercise question. I know this book well. If you run your IT department based on these principles, you are on the way to CTO or CEO. I cannot stress how good his ideas are and how important it is to implement in your organization. I have no doubt that the Celestial Kingdom's IT department uses this as an SA biblical reference. By the way, the author(s) is/are not my friends. Thanks for reading. Vote me to the top please.


A book without implementation details, but hard to beat   July 14, 2002
  35 out of 38 found this review helpful

"The Practice of System and Network Administration" (TPOSANA) sat on my shelf for nearly a year before I read it. I wish now I'd read it a year ago! It's rare to find a book useful to both Windows and UNIX system administrators, but rarer still to read one designed to improve one's career and attitude.

TPOSANA is a 'framework' book. It teaches you how to think and leaves out the implementation details. System administration isn't all about man pages and tech books. The authors' principles -- simplicity, clarity, generality, automation, communication, and basics first -- will make a good sys admin great and a great sys admin extraordinary.

Others have outlined the TPOSANA contents, so I'll share my favorite aspects of the book. The writing is lively and witty, with memory-jogging conclusions nicely summarizing each chapter's contents. The text is filled with dozens of applicable and informative case studies. Finally, the authors devote seven chapters to fundamental management and personal attitude issues, showing they know people and processes matter as much as products.

I highly recommend TPOSANA. The sad irony is those most needing to read this book will push it aside, as I initally did. Those who take the time to read it will be glad they did. Anyone acting in a technical capacity -- sys admins, engineers, and programmers -- will find it enlightening and entertaining.