Principles of Network and System Administration (utgåvan 2000)

Burgess approaches both network and system administration from theperspective of principles and ideas which do not change on aday-to-day basis. A great deal of attention is paid to the heuristics of systemand network administration; technical and sociological issues aretaken into account equally and are presented thoughtfully with aneye to teaching not what to do as a system or networkadministrator, but how to think about problems that arise inpractice. As a result, the author keeps the reader looking forwardto what comes next and how to implement what he or she haslearned. The focus is on strategic issues, how to keep systemsmaintainable and how to manage configuration files across anenterprise. During the 80s and most of the 90s the frontiers ofsystem administration were about understanding what the jobentailed and building tools in order to manage networks moreefficiently. The next phase is about standardization ofmanagement and practice, making system administration more formaland less ad hoc, and Burgess' book is one of the first tobegin to push into this area.