Distributed

I first reviewed this book three and a half years ago. It is time for an updated review to reaffirm this book's value nearly four years after it was first published.

First, since this book was published there have only been two (that I know of) books that address the topic of mission critical systems management: Blueprints for High Availability: Designing Resilient Distributed Systems and High Avaliability: Design, Techniques and Processes.

Second, after reading the other two books this one continues to have a solid place - it fills in gaps of the other two.

Third, Mission Critical Systems Management contains the best approach to service level management from among the three books in this category.

The key strengths of this book are its straightforward approach to designing, deploying and maintaining highly available systems on a 24x7 basis. The author chronicles his own approach to doing this, which lends authority and credibility to the book. The service level agreement format provided in the book continues to be one of the best I have come across. And the approach itself is sound.

There are no discernable weaknesses. Three and a half years ago I gave this book 4 stars because it cited specific products. I am giving it 5 stars today because in retrospect this complaint is irrelevant. What counts is the fact that a technology book written nearly four years ago is as valid and valuable today as when it was first written.

Bottom line: Mission Critical Systems Management contains a good balance of process and technical detail, and provides a clear path to achieving 24x7 operations. It fills the gaps of, and augments, the two other books on the subject: High Avaliability: Design, Techniques and Processes (process-oriented) and Blueprints for High Availability: Designing Resilient Distributed Systems (technology-oriented).

If you haven't read this book because of its age, read it and marvel at how timeless the contents are. If you read it when it first came out, re-read it and discover how prescient the author was when he sat down to write it.

Tired of continued turnover of skilled systems personnel? Confused by the haphazard introduction of new technologies, such as Windows NT? In this new extraordinary book you can learn both the practical skills and cultural context needed to deal with growing complexity of systems support in a rapidly evolving marketplace. Specific to distributed computing systems, this first-of-its-kind idea book divulges knowledge accumulated over years of practical experience in the arena of performance, availability and cost reduction. Like a modern-day Frederick W. Taylor, Lirov believes that systems support can be rigorously quantified and improved through disciplined planning and execution. He pulled together a team of experts first to elevate systems support at Lehman Brothers to the best service on Wall Street, and then to share t he acquired grasp of this tremendously difficult subject with the readers. Abandoning the traditional approach of focusing on a single support discipline, Lirov paints a panoramic view of an all-inclusive support process. In his lucid foreword to the book, Kevin McGilloway, CIO at Lehman Brothers, emphasizes the criticality of matching technical solutions with cultural change. The topics span the entire gamut of support disciplines encompassing all aspects of systems, database, and batch administration, including contributions from experts at such leading edge institutions as He wlett-Packard and Cray. The ideas, described in comprehensive detail, transcend the Intranet and apply to systems management on the Internet. These ideas also encompass multiple systems platforms, especially, UNIX and Windows NT. The book's only drawback is that it stops short of offering more detail on cross-platform systems management. With dozens of practical examples, this is an advanced level text, geared towards IT managers, systems and database administrators, and graduate students. If you are in the trenches, battling to manage distributed systems of unprecedented complexity, this book can save your career -- and your sanity.

This book explores the monumental task of supporting today's heterogeneous distributed computer systems. The new methodology introduced in the book is based on accountability and automation and has been key to effecting spectacular improvements in both support quality and personnel productivity at Lehman Brothers. The production of this seminal text involved a team-oriented approach. Written with colleagues from leading investment, industry, and academic institutions such as Salomon Brothers, Sun Microsystems and MIT, the work's subject reflects its team-oriented authorship. The book's uniqueness lies in its lucid treatment of a subject which is inherently behind-the-scenes. In a brilliant foreword, Kevin McGilloway, CIO of Lehman Brothers, articulates the fundamental reality of systems support where "no news is good news", and yet no modern trading can be conducted without the computer. In what he describes as the "change culture" of Wall Street, where profit depends on market dynamics, computer systems must enable traders to capitalize on the continuous evolution of markets. This dynamic marketplace tolerates nothing less than zero downtime. The book shows how to meet the ultimate challenge of balancing change with perfect availability of the computer/communications infrastructure.

It is a VERY good book on Jini. This is my FIRST jini book. I am a jini newbie. This book has answered lot of my questions on Jini and has guided me, step by step, to develop my first Jini project. I realize this book isn't complete ... but as a software developer, I need a book which can guide me to write effective & good code AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. I like it a lot ... really.

Buy it

This book helped med get hands-on-experience with Jini.

I say no more. Enjoy it!

Among the JINI books, this book can be considered as very informative to learn about JINI technology.

This book covers the following topics nicely:

1. JINI lookup service 2. Entry Objects 3. Service Registration 4. Discovery Management 5. Interesting Jini Examples

I think this book provides good insight to the JINI technologies. I recommend this book highly

I really liked this book. It was very informative. Although published by HP Press, the book talks extensively about other Unix platforms as well as NT. The book is probably one year old by now, but I still recommend it. The authors cover almost every hardware option you can think of. A must read for any IT person planning an SAP Implementation.

I highly recommend this book to companies that are going to start an SAP project. The book provides the foundation to design and build a solid technical infrastructure for SAP. Moreover, it is easy to read, covers every aspect, and is plenty of examples.

I am an experienced SAP technical consultant and wish this book were available some years ago. On common problem I have seen is that companies don't understand, from the infrastructure point of view, what an SAP project involves. The objective of this book is to make them aware of what they don't know (and could hurt them) at the right time, which is before the project actually starts.

I wish that I had this book when we started our SAP project. This book will help anyone who is thinking about installing or upgrading SAP. It helps explain how SAP software will use the hardware. And how all of the pieces fit together. Even though this book is by HP press it stays true to the theme. They do try and "sell" HP hardware or solutions every once in awhile, but for the most part this book is generic in vendor. You won't go wrong with reading this book or just having it for reference the next time you have to upgrade your hardware or if you are having response problems and need to know how to evaluate your hardware. We have been an SAP customer for six years and have grown up with SAP in the US (started at version 2.1 and have just completed our 4.6 upgrade!).

Seventeen years ago, when I went off to college, my mom gave me an already dog-eared, threadbare copy of the American Home All Purpose Cookbook. After a 10 year career in the restaurant industry, and a huge collection of cookbooks, it is still the cookbook I turn to for authoritative and traditional recipes, menus, and entertaining advice. Finding out that this book is out of print is awful news and I will have to take my copy to someone for some restoration / repair. If you can find a copy of this book, in any condition, scoop it up.

I bought this book in 1966, when it was first published, and it has been a mainstay in my kitchen, even though I have over 100 cookbooks. The end papers in the front and back have such useful information as food equivalents, equivalent weights and measures, substitutions and helpful hints for garnishes and decorations. I always use their roasting tables for meat and poultry, and I have many favorites among the bread and cookie recipes.

This book is a excellent survey of the Microsoft BackOffice technologies, and the business environment in which they are implemented. This book is a must read for those in business or technology roles that are trying to determine the best infrastructure for their business solutions. If you are looking for how to add a mailbox to Exchange Server this is not the book for you, but if you are trying to understand the business issues and benefits of deploying BackOffice then you have found a unique book that should be listed with "Business" books in addition to "Computer" books.

The book helped me to understand when I should use which BackOffice product and where. The scenarios at the begining of each chapter provide examples of how BackOffice can addressmany of the challenges faced in systems integration and administration.

I have been doing SQA and related engineering for almost twenty years and have not seen many books that actually get into the "nuts and bolts" of software testing as well as this one does. Mosley takes great pains to insure that whether you are a newcomer to SQA or a seasoned pro, something is here for you. I recently moved from a strictly software testing environment to a Client-Server environment and used this book extensively to "get up to speed" with the new internet testing concepts presented in this publication. Very practical examples, clear explanations and a thorough knowledge of the topic. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is new to the field and any one needs ideas on how to put a test environment together that really produces immediate results. I have worked on many software engineering projects over the past twenty years and wished many times for a book like this, now its here.

Of all the sofware testing books I've read, Mosley's stands out as the easiest to read, and contains real-world tangible examples that can be put to use immediatley. His Test Plan outlines are excellent and are built from IEEE standards. Lots of useful information and minimum test philosophy. Like many client-server books, the focus is primarily e-commerce, but the test approaches can be applied to any multi-user GUI application.

This is a textbook for my class. As i can learn nothing from the Prof, this book helps me out a lot!

It is good book to keep as reference. Excellent for people who are starting/interested/working on client server projects.

But why it is out of print?

A must read for any technical manager who is responsible for a system that uses replication or is planning to do so. Technologists (DBA, SA, DA, Developer,..) will also gain valuable insight into the world of data replication that the vendor documentation does not provide. The decision tree (pg215) and the case study take this book over the top.

It's tough to find an entire book on the subject of replication. Most database books give only a chapter's worth of lip service to the topic, if that much, and then move on to the other "important" chapters. I can't even count how many "advanced" database books I have that devote an entire chapter on introducing SQL, yet skip this advanced topic. Distributed apps require distributed data and this book defintiely covers a lot of ground in the right direction.

The only thing that kept me from giving it a 10 is the hope that something better may come along. But even if it does, I'll still thumb through Buretta's some more. The Case Studies are a particularly good feature, and one actually applied to the situation I needed resolving when I picked this book up

My heartful thanks to the author for the book in this area. The revised edition may include new focuses in the current areas like workflow management.

This is a great reference to understand the client/server database model and some brief data warehouse architecture. I really appreciate the author's vision to see the system building like a "industrial factory" involving world-class manufacturing concepts like Just-In-Time, Success Circles, etc. It's a new perspective of the system life-cycle. Covers very well aspects of relational database concepts, not focusing on a single vendor, with finance and manufacturing concepts. Anyone who was to understand client/server computing MUST READ IT. I didn't find any similar book in the market. Very professional.

Every thing was done professionally, I am complete satisfied with the service I recieved.

This book was written as a college-level text. It also targets IT professionals who need to quickly understand the differences between e-commerce applications and traditional information systems as a secondary audience.

As a college-level text this book is one of the few that will prepare students for the real world. The scope of topics, level of detail, and carefully chosen case studies are impressive because they capture the key knowledge areas and issues that working professionals deal with.

As a refresher for working professionals who need to understand the big picture and intermediate details associated with e-commerce applications this book's wide coverage of topics makes it ideal. While students will need to work through the entire book, an IT professional can choose the topic areas selectively. For example, the chapter on E-commerce applications that covers supply chain management, e-tialing and auction sites will have more appeal to a working professional, while the chapters on programming will probably capture a student's interest.

Additional features that will be of interest to each audience include:

- Students and Instructors: (1) CD ROM that comes with the book contains exercises, source code, and additional study material, (2) a companion web site that provides 296 PowerPoint slides that augment the course, and (3) links to over 750 web sites that reinforce the lessons.

- Working professionals: the CD ROM that comes with the book contains the full text of the book, which will allow searching for any topic or keyword. This is an excellent research resource, that is all the more valuable since the book is up-to-date and covers current technologies (Java, relational databases, XML, etc.), as well as important business issues.