If you've perused the shelves at your local bookstore recently,
you've probably noticed the large number of Windows NT books available. After a
while, the titles start to look the same. To navigate through them, you might
look for a particular author you trust and enjoy or a particular publisher. I
look for O'Reilly and Associates books. Initially, the company published only
UNIX-oriented material, but now it's moving into the NT arena. AEleen Frisch's
Essential Windows NT System Administration is one of O'Reilly's NT
books, but the book has strong ties to UNIX. Essential Information About
Windows NT Tools for UNIX Administrators is a more appropriate title because
the book provides a UNIX feel for NT functions. According to the author, the
book can help NT administrators manage NT systems as productively as possible.
However, the title is misleading because Essential Windows NT focuses on
the tools available for NT rather than on NT systems administration.
A large portion of the book focuses on explaining how to write Perl and
other scripts to automate common tasks, such as requiring users to change their
password or reporting users' disk usage. The rest of the book covers the startup and shutdown of an NT system, automation of systems administration, process
management, files and directories, print services, security, and performance
optimization. The book doesn't discuss these topics in a particular order or in
sufficient detail to benefit experienced NT administrators.
The book has several assets. For example, if you are familiar with Perl (or
want to learn about the language), you will benefit from Essential Windows
NT's many usable scripts. Frisch also describes some important tools that
are available (e.g., Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 Resource Kit and
Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 Resource Kit) and how you can
maximize the benefits they provide. Essential Windows NT includes lists
of important commands and tools. For UNIX users, Appendix A contains a list of
UNIX commands and their NT counterparts, Appendix B includes a list of resource
kit tools, and Appendix C contains helpful NT commands and scripting language
constructs.
However, Essential Windows NT doesn't provide all the essentials.
In the section about extending NTFS volumes, Frisch doesn't mention that you
can't extend a volume containing NT system files. The book also contains several
errors. For example, when Frisch discusses the differences between NT
Workstation and NT Server, she claims NT Server can support as many as 32
processors. However, out of the box, NT Server supports only 4 processors, and
NT Server 4.0, Enterprise Edition supports 8 processors. To support as many as
32 processors on NT, you must purchase custom solutions.
If you're a UNIX administrator facing the task of administering an NT
system, this book might help you. If you're an experienced NT administrator,
this book might teach you a few new tricks. (I found Appendix A's UNIX-to-NT
command comparison particularly informative.) Even if you're a first-time NT
user with no UNIX experience, you might find the book interesting. More in-depth
books are available. But, when clients who are UNIX experts say to me, "This
is how I performed a function in UNIX; how do I do it on NT?" I'll have a
handy reference to provide an answer.
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First, the review asserts that a large portion of the book consists of discussions of Perl and other scripts to automate common tasks. This material is in the book, but it’s not the book’s central focus, as the review suggests. One chapter of the book (and a couple of brief references in other chapters) covers automation.
Second, the book is not aimed at or useful to only UNIX users moving to Windows NT. I devoted one appendix to helping UNIX administrators migrate more easily, but I wrote every chapter of the book to be accessible by either UNIX or non-UNIX readers. As the preface clearly states, the book is not intended for administrators who are already NT wizards. It’s aimed at beginning and intermediate NT administrators, including administrators migrating from other operating system (OS) environments and administrators with experience as NT users.
Finally, the review states that the book covers only tools for NT systems administration and presents a superficial treatment of the topic in general. Even a quick examination of the book’s contents will reveal this observation to be false. The organization is task-based; every chapter provides background information about the systems administration task under consideration and discusses administrative techniques and procedures in the context of that task. The book covers standard NT features as well as other items (resource kit tools, free software, third-party products, scripts) that an administrator might need to get the job done.
All in all, I’m very disappointed and concerned about the misleading impression of the book that results from this review. People can disagree about how well something fulfills the purpose it’s intended for, but as far as this review is concerned, we don’t seem to be looking at the same book.<br>
--AEleen Frisch
AEleen Frisch August 11, 1999