Essential Mac OS X Panther Server Administration: Integrating Mac OS X Server into Heterogeneous Networks
Reviewed by Robert Pritchett
Authors: Michael Bartosh http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/1268 Ryan Faas http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/catalog/view/au/2165 O’Reilly Booksite: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/macxserver Released: May 2005 $50 USD, $70 CND, £35.50 GBP, €43 Euro Pages: 848 ISBN: 0596006357 Requirements: Maybe a cross-platform network. And being a SysAdmin helps. Not for beginners. Strengths: Comes from the UNIX-perspective. Weaknesses: Does have various typos throughout the book. |
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Essential Mac OS X Panther Server Administration: Integrating Mac OS X Server into Heterogeneous Networks by Michael Bartosh and Ryan Faas is a comprehensive book on all things server-related regarding Mac OS X coming from the inherent strength of Unix.
The book is divided up into 7 parts; Server Installation and Management, Directory, IP, File, Security and Internet Services and Client Management and stretch across 29 chapters. And there is an Appendix on Directory Services.
If you are into managing servers, in a heterogeneous environment (mixed platforms), than this book will take the mystery out of integrating Mac Servers into the “rest of the world”. So what is the downside? This is Panther-based and not Tiger-based, however, since it is all UNIX, that should not stop you from getting this book.
We provided the link under Michael Bartosh’s name for the website that is dedicated to this book for more information and updates. I’m guessing strongly that there will be an update covering Tiger because Tiger Server has a few enhancements: http://developer.apple.com/server/tigerserver.html
So I consider this Panther Server Administration as a baseline book for anyone remotely interested in enterprise-level server management – and the WinTel Sysadmin excuse of, “it won’t work” will no longer be acceptable - or tolerated.
At 848 pages, this book isn’t just “Essential”, it is “Comprehensive” due to its indepth detail. Now there is no excuse either for not going to an Xserve environment.
In a word? Meticulous.
Chapter 27 gets into managing Windows clients with 17 pages of information and also discusses what parts of the Windows environment works and what doesn’t under Panther. Chapter 29 is an and-on chapter that rounds out the book by discussing Apple remote Desktop, which is not part of Mac OS X Server, but obviously is a part of any Enterprise-level Apple Sysadmin’s job.
Find out more from Mary Norbury-Glaser’s excellent detailed summary: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/06/15/2047253 and additional comments to her review are relatively good and intelligently written. Now that the foundation is in place, we need to get the roof on with Tiger before we get to the MacTel environment.
Now if Apple would only get MS Exchange to work under Mac OS X Server…