Mastering Windows 2000 Server

Book by Minasi, Mark, Anderson, Christa, Smith, Brian, Toombs, Doug

Mark Minasi is an excellent technical writer and a veteran of many high-quality projects. Mastering Windows 2000 Server, albeit based on a late beta version of its subject (release candidate 2), is the newest in his string of triumphs. With remarkable detail and with something approaching comprehensiveness, Minasi documents Windows 2000 Server capabilities with an eye toward the goals of real-world network administrators and the problems they're likely to encounter.

His style is fun in that it communicates procedures without descending into "choose this, click that" tedium, instead using narrative prose with illustrations to combine practical material with enough background information to promote truer understanding. Occasional tables and bulleted lists, ready for marking, hold commands, options, and other reference information.

Because Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Advanced Server are largely the same (Advanced Server supports more memory and a greater number of processors than plain Server), this book ought to prove useful to administrators of both. Windows 2000 Datacenter Server admins have to worry about some additional capabilities (notably clustering and load balancing) that aren't covered here, but even they should benefit from this book's contents.

Though Minasi makes a point of saying that he didn't write with exams in mind, this book should also prove useful to people studying for Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) exams involving Windows 2000 technologies. Mastering Windows 2000 Server is an excellent value. --David Wall

Topics covered: Features of Windows 2000 Server (and similar products) from the administrator's perspective. The author (who based his research and writing on the Release Candidate 2 late-beta edition of Windows 2000 Server) gives particularly lavish attention to Active Directory, Remote Installation Services, Windows Terminal Services, and various aspects of network connectivity. Users who want to hook Macintoshes and NetWare networks to Windows 2000 systems will find useful material.