active directory field guide
Following my recent review of Active Directory Design and Implementation, I thought I would review another AD book I've been meaning to read -- the Active Directory Field Guide.
While I was hoping to be able to draw a comparison between the two and maybe even have a little battle, I found the only similarity between these two books is that their topic is of Active Directory. While the Design and Implementation book takes a scenario-based approach, the field guide is in your normal feature-centric format.
Oh, yay! Another technical book that just runs through all the features and calls it a day! How exciting, huh? Actually, it wasn't that bad at all. There were two things that caught my eye when I first saw this book: the term "Field Guide" in the title and the size of the book.
Everyones seen phrases like "Definitive Guide" and "Beginners Guide" in titles of books, but not "Field Guide". "Field Guide" drives home the point that the book is geared toward people already on the job and need a quick reference. But does it cover everything you'd need to know?
The second eye-catcher is the size of the book -- both in page length and physical measurement. While other books on Active Directory span around 600 pages, this one is half the length. Not only that, but it's physically 1/3rd smaller than your normal technical book. With something this small, I had to ask myself again, "does it cover everything?"
In answer to that question, yes, it does. This Field Guide contains everything from Installation to Scripting. While all these topics are covered in every other Active Directory book, they're actually explained in a more detailed and understandable way than the others. This just goes to show how there's an art to making things smaller -- cut out all the fluff, but keep the facts in an ordered, understandable way.
How about some examples? Just in the first chapter, there's a piece about scripting dcpromo. Unless I'm blind, I've never seen this anywhere else. The second chapter not only explains how to set up DNS and DHCP, but explains how they work (including a reference to the different types of DNS records). We're a big fan of Group Policy at work, so I particularly enjoyed that section as well. (did you know you can hash executables to prevent renaming?) Again, maybe I'm blind and just never saw topics like this covered in other Active Directory books, but that's why the size of this book works so well -- it's so small, you can't miss things!
Like I mentioned before, I really can't draw a comparison to the Design and Implementation book. They're both written differently and both are extremely useful in certain situations. Further, I can't recommend one book over the other. In fact, I'd recommend picking up both books -- with a combination like that, you'll be well on your way to being an Active Directory expert.
I'm giving this book a 9/10.
