Yeah I read your posts and I think "it depends" is the standard but good answer. Everything else is kind of hard. I don't expect there are many occasions where you get to build from scratch, you are usually building from some form of infrastructure that you have to keep in mind.
Would I be willing to do a "best practices" book. No. I am just no so sure I believe in "best practices" strong enough to publish something saying this is what they are. As Susan often points out the best practices can very tremendously where you are. I have several ideas bouncing around in my head with what I may do. One I can visualize being done is probably a conversational type book with cool tech questions I have answered say over the last several years with maybe further discussion and more details behind the answers. Probably break it up into some general tech sections. That would give me the most freedom I think in how and what I write so end up liking it but not sure how well it would sell. I would probably just do that through a no-name publisher so the book could be low cost. Another would be a series of a couple of books that just focused on some specific things and really tried to dig into them. AD is a huge topic and it really doesn't do it justice to try to cover tons of the tech in a single book, no one ever seems to get through it and what you do get through stops short on the depth of where you might want it to go. Or at least I have seen that myself in books in many tech areas. If this book ends up selling really well then I will that be more geeked about writing some more. I look at myself as a normal joe and find it difficult to see why people would pay to read something I write (especially when they can read what I write for free all over the place). It is one of the reasons why my tools are free. I figure, why pay for something you could pretty much do yourself if you really needed it that bad. It is more about fun for me though I wouldn't mind somehow figuring out how to make it big doing it. One idea for the best practices may be just to grab a group of experts or if you chose, a group of MVPs so you can call it the MVP AD Best Practices or something like that and let them all duke it out over what would be the best practice. As we have seen from this list several times, best practices are things that people have different opinions about. Look at the empty root discussion as a great example. You will find people that are gung ho empty root, some that are gung ho against it, some that are sort of against it but won't really fight you and some that are sort of for it but won't really fight you. joe -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rich Milburn Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 2:30 PM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT: speaking of AD books... A further note on a BP book, RE the "it depends" response: It's true that is often the answer for "it depends". But often there is a recommended way to do something (def. for best practice) and if you are following best practices then it really doesn't "depend", because the unknowns are taken care of. There are books (big, thick ones) that tell you all the ways you can do something. For people who do a lot of consulting, or are assuming a big mess, these are lifesavers. But what about the lucky [EMAIL PROTECTED]@rd that gets to build a company's infrastructure from scratch? Something that when others look at it, they can guess what's there because it makes sense, it uses defaults, it follows commonly accepted guidelines... other fields have these guidelines, I believe, more than our industry does (such as accounting's GAP). The more I think about it... the more I try to determine if I might have enough time to compile such a thing. It would draw heavily from this list... Rich -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Fuller, Stuart Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 9:44 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT: speaking of AD books... C) Hunter and I were TRs and I would highly recommend it. Joe & Robbie have made significant changes and have cleared up a couple of my pet peeves in the scripts and security bits from the 2E book. It also still has the best introduction and explanation of VB scripting for AD. As to the BP guide... I too would like to see that. We have managed to stay fairly centralized but we are now supporting a second remote data center. The one thing that has saved us is the new version of Dell's RAC card. It has a virtual CD/floppy drive feature where you can map your local workstation drive to be the CD or floppy of the server. Using that feature I was able to do bare metal installs across the wire. Very cool and saved me a seven hour round trip drive to eastern Montana. _Stuart Fuller -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Rocky Habeeb Sent: Monday, January 23, 2006 8:14 AM To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT: speaking of AD books... Dear people, I would appreciate it it you would prioritize the following for me; [A] [ ] Work 60 hours a week managing (with only one other person) 250 PCs in 4 states and 40 Servers. [B] [ ] Live at the only bookmark in my browser when at home "www.microsoft.com" looking for solutions, etc. [C] [ ] Read joe's (et al) new book. [D] [ ] Studying for my MCSA [E] [ ] Studying for my MCP [F] [ ] Studying for my MCSE [G] [ ] Securing my network [H] [ ] Reading the new book joe is going to write on BP's [Yes, please tell me how to rebuild a DC remotely from bare metal!!] [I] [ ] Reading Robbie's book(s) (note: please sub-prioritize those books) [J] [ ] Balanicing my checkbook ( hey .. I have to do something else at home, right?) [K] [ ] Patching my network [L] [ ] Learn to script [M] [ ] Watch College basketball on TV [N] [ ] Read all of Sakari's books [O] [ ] Read the AD list archives completely "Hey, I'm almost serious here." As Guido would say, "That's enough for today." RH List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/activedir%40mail.activedir.org/ -------APPLEBEE'S INTERNATIONAL, INC. CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE------- PRIVILEGED / CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION may be contained in this message or any attachments. This information is strictly confidential and may be subject to attorney-client privilege. This message is intended only for the use of the named addressee. If you are not the intended recipient of this message, unauthorized forwarding, printing, copying, distribution, or using such information is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this in error, you should kindly notify the sender by reply e-mail and immediately destroy this message. 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