ISBN1424342317

The FIRST and the ONLY Book that Covers Both NEW HP CSA Exams (HP0-095 and HP0-A01)
======================================================================
Like the first edition of this book, the second edition also covers three main objectives - to provide a comprehensive resource to individuals, including novice, IT/Non-HP-UX administrators, and HP-UX administrators who intend to take the new HP Certified Systems Administrator exams HP0-095 and/or HP0-A01 and pass them; to provide a quick and valuable on-the-job resource to HP-UX administrators, administrators of other UNIX operating systems, IT managers, programmers, and DBAs working in the HP-UX environment; and to provide an easy-to-understand guide to novice and IT/non-HP-UX administrators who intend to learn HP-UX from the beginning.

This book contains 38 chapters and is structured to facilitate readers to grasp concepts, understand implementation procedures, understand basic troubleshooting, learn command syntax, configuration files, and daemons involved. The 38 chapters are divided into three key areas: UNIX Fundamentals, HP-UX System Administration, and HP-UX Network Administration.

1. UNIX Fundamentals (chapters 1 to 6 and 23) covers the basics of UNIX. Most information is not specific to a particular UNIX flavor, rather includes general UNIX concepts, file manipulation and security techniques, vi editor, shell and awk programming, basic commands, and other essential topics. Unlike many other similar books, a chapter on shell scripting is presented after covering HP-UX System Administration area. This is done purposely to supply readers with practical examples based on the knowledge they gain from UNIX Fundamentals and HP-UX System Administration chapters.

2. HP-UX System Administration (chapters 7 to 22) covers the HP-UX-specific system administration concepts and topics, including system partitioning and HP-UX installation; software and patch management; user and group administration; LVM and VxVM management; file system and swap administration; system shutdown and startup procedures; kernel configuration and reconfiguration techniques; backup and restore functions; printer and print request management, job automation and process control; and system logging and performance monitoring.

3. HP-UX Network Administration (chapters 24 to 38) covers HP-UX network administration concepts and topics, such as OSI and TCP/IP reference models; network hardware overview and LAN card administration; IP subnetting and routing techniques; basic network testing and troubleshooting; internet services and sendmail; time synchronization (NTP) and resource sharing (NFS, AutoFS, and CIFS) services; naming (DNS, NIS, and LDAP) and boot services; automated installation techniques and high-availability concepts; and system security and hardening.

Each chapter begins with a list of major topics to be covered in the chapter and ends with a summary. Throughout the book, tables, figures, screen shots, and examples are given for explanation purposes. The output generated because of running commands and shell scripts is highlighted in light grey background to differentiate from surrounding text.

The book includes several appendices, one of which contains 672 practice exam questions. Answers to practice exam questions and tables of commands, important files, and service daemons are included in appendix area as well.

The secret of writing good,simple and easy to learn technical book is to understand the concept and root of the subject inside out via complex manuals, man pages, and hands on experience- a lot, and THEN put it all in very simple form. The author has done this very well.
Among the many advantages of this book, one is , the very simple language used to explain complex topics. The author is clearly very knowledgeable of HP-UX, inside out. Clearly,the author has hands on experience and knows WHAT examples to put where. Lots of Network concepts are cleared after reading this book. This book is VERY valuable for Exam AND day to day reference for HP-Admins.
Typically I do not write reviews for the technical books that I read BUT this book deserves good review.