OT : Good XP Domain Admin book?

I've started a new job (yay!) in which I'm the IT network admin,
including a windows server domain
controller/email/web/firewall/teamaker as well as taking over the whole
of the s/w development team (population : 1, moi)

As I've never done MS server admin before does anyone have any
recommendations for really good, no nonsense books to cover the
following:-

MS Domain Administration
MS SQL Server
Active Directory
(DNS, DHCP, ODBC are things I saw whilst having a quick look at it)

I'd rather have a slimline reference sort of book, rather than a x000
page War&Peace type book IYSWIM.

Only got to do me for a couple of months until I get the go ahead to
move the whole lot over to a linux server I'll build.

 

If it's only for a month or so, I reckon you can get by with intuition,
online help and asking here.

I wouldn't waste any time trying to get under the covers of any of it.

 

[snip]

So exactly how did you get a job as a network admin when you've
never done any server admin before?

<fx:goes back to read job spec with 200k salary on JobServe>

 

As Judge has said, if its only for a couple of months, dont bother unless
youre actually insterested in it...You can easily get by just by asking on
here or dropping me a mail with any specifics...

If youre actually interested in how it all works, any books by Mark Minasi
are the ones to get. The man actually knows what hes talking about, and
puts usefull stuff in his books, as opposed to most of them that either tell
you stuff thats bleeding obvious, or deal with situations relating to
HugeMegaGlobECorp, when all you want to know is how to add a PC to a single
domain or something equally simple.

 

Jammy. I tried going for a job I knew nothing about once (Linux Admin
years ago) but there was a test.
As I didn't know how to mount a floppy[1], let alone compile the stuff
on it once mounted[2], I failed in a spectacular fashion.[4]

This sentence should read "I'd rather not be caught reading up".

[1] Fnaar, obviously
[2] I couldn't do it anyway, as it turned out his floppy was blank.[3]
[3] Once he showed me how to mount it[1], we found he had less grasp of
how to put stuff on a floppy than I had of how to compile it.
[4] I was invited to read up and go back in a months time, which I did,
but this time his network was dead. I decided it might be too much work
for the money, and I had a better offer by then.

 

Have you confirmed this would be in the best _business_ interest of your
employer?

 

If they've been set up correctly then looking after them is not tricky and
there's loads of stuff out on the web. I'd just wing it using the on-line
help.

<sniffs bait>

Why?

 

<knows better but...>

What has that got to do with it? Far more worrying (from a migration POV)
would be if the database has no SP's and all the SQL is embedded in the
application.

 

Well, IIRC in version 5 of MySQL stored procedures weren't *fully*
implemented.

Furthermore, what if the customers applications are written in such a
way as to take security from active directory groups, and these groups
are also used to control security in SQL server.

This whole thread could end up being quite funny.

 

In a geeky sort of way, yes.

But certainly (I suspect) not for the company in question.

But anyway, I'm sure it'll emerge that Frag was just trolling and we've (or
at least me) fallen for it.

 

<Reads back through thread - twice>

I don't see any mention of moving to MySQL.


--
Krusty.

http://www.muddystuff.co.uk
http://www.muddystuff.us
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'02 MV Senna '96 Tiger '79 Fantic 250

 

No, but he's not going to run MS SQL server on linux... what do you
imagine being used?

 

Ah, so it was an assumption. I thought maybe there was some thread
merging going on or summit.

As to what I'd imagine - I have no idea. Depends on scale, budget,
expertise etc etc. Oracle, Oracle XE, DB2, PostgreSQL are all options.

--
Krusty.

http://www.muddystuff.co.uk
http://www.muddystuff.us
Off-road classifieds

'02 MV Senna '96 Tiger '79 Fantic 250

 

I think they'd probably be considered pricey for companies with 1 man
band it teams.

Perhaps we should ask an independant IT consultant.

 

That's what we thought when we said we could use Oracle instead of SQL
Server for our recent project. "It's only standard SQL".

 

Did you really expect anything from Microsoft to conform to a standard?

 

Hahahhahah.

Yes they SHOULD be the same - but they aren't. Oracle and MS (as examples)
are as bad as each other.

It's much easier trying to migrate SP's than it would hard coded SQL.

 

If you really wanted to write portable apps, and knew what you were
doing, your SQL would be neither in a stored procedures or hard-coded
in the application; you'd stick one-instance-per-RDBMS-SQL fragments
(or at the very least database-agnostic SQL) in an XML file, and have
your app dynamically detect which RDBMS was active and use the relevant
code.

 

No it shouldn't. Database vendors provide lots of extensions to
standard SQL to make life easier/faster/better. Not using those
extensions in case you decide to port to a different RDBMS at some
point in the future is just plain daft.

I'm with dwb on this - do the work on the same tier as the data using
stored procs. It's easier to maintain, generally faster, produces less
network traffic, is more secure (blocks sql injection), & makes it
easier to switch front ends.


--
Krusty.

http://www.muddystuff.co.uk
http://www.muddystuff.us
Off-road classifieds

'02 MV Senna '96 Tiger '79 Fantic 250

 

Yes, but where's the scope for getting future work in that eh?

And I'm not sure I'd agree with all that you've said from a performance
point of view if I've understood it correctly - SP's are (still) more
efficient than sending through text.

Now however if you had it read your XML file to get the name of the SQL SP
(based on platform) to run, then would that not be a good half way house?