operating systems

IIS 6 is a great web server, but to really get the most out of it you need a book like this Pocket Consultant. There's lots of little tips and tricks for newbies and long-time admins alike, and the book never talks down to the reader. The style of writing is very easy to read (and enjoyable too).

One thing that is really refreshing about this book is that it is downright honest. IIS is certainly not perfect, and it has its share of little glitches, flaws, and annoyances. Stanek comes out and mentions these up front AND he includes workarounds (official or otherwise) when they exist.

Enough blathering - I can sum up this book in one sentence: Whether you're new to the world of IIS or someone who knows IIS, this book has lots of good stuff you can make use of. Buy it.

I'll admit that I haven't read all of this book (yet), but I did use it to help me get an IIS 6.0 up and running, with a couple of web sites and an FTP server. I read parts of two other books about IIS 6.0 too, and comparing these three books I'd put this one in the middle in terms of how helpful I found it.

In general I think this is a pretty good book. The author seems to know his stuff and is good at explaining things, and the subject matter is well organized.

You should be aware that this book covers only the administration of IIS 6.0. It does not include any information about how to install IIS 6.0 or anything about creating web applications.

One thing I liked is that the book includes a chapter about the Indexing Service, something that I notice is not mentioned at all in the other two books I've read about IIS 6.0. I expect to be using Indexing Service later, and appreciate that it is covered here.

The chapter about setting up and administering an FTP site did not include any example showing how to best do this when FTP is to be used to upload material to a web site. On the other hand, the book did include the necessary warnings about the security issues involved, and it did include enough information so that I was able to figure out the best setup within the given limitations. So this book is still better than the other two books I read about IIS 6.0 concerning this point.

A few random quibbles:

- There's a mistake on pages 5 and 11 where it says that IIS 6.0 is not installed by default when Windows Server 2003 is installed. That's not true for Windows Server 2003 Web Edition.

- Figure 3-3 on page 51 is incorrect.

- References from one place in the book to another place do not use page numbers, only chapter and section titles, making it harder to find the place being referenced. (But apparently all modern IT books are like this. Is it because the same formatting is used for an eBook version?)

In conclusion, this book is too big to really be a "pocket consultant", but within its limited scope it does a very good job.

Rennie Petersen

I'm not quite sure why they named this one the Pocket Consultant because this book is quite a bit oversized to fit that title though still smaller than the standard sized computer book (i'm guessing the size at about 8" x 6" and about 1 1/2" thick). For those that are concerned more with the content of the book instead of actual size in relation to the title, the IIS 6.0 Administrator's Pocket Consultant should be everything you need to manage and tune IIS.

I've been in Windows server administration about 8 years, the last 3 of which for a web host. We started running Windows 2003 with IIS 6.0 since its inception early 2003. Due to the nature of what is required of me, I need as many tools as possible to help in troubleshooting and configuration of IIS from every possible aspect since I am responsible for 20,000+ web sites. IIS 6.0 is so much more different and robust than IIS 5.0 and previous versions, so there is a bit of a learning curve involved with the transition. This book will help the person that has never touched the new version of IIS as well as the veteran that has worked with it for quite some time.

It wont be the only book you need to host a single or multiple web sites, since you also need to know about .net, asp, SQL, depending on the needs of each site. This book will however provide a most if not all of what you need to take care of the actual web server portion of your duties.

For more information on Windows 2003, I also suggest Windows Server 2003 Unleased.