The 'Tuna' is not just in Dallas
The term 'Tuna' means more to me than a nickname for Dallas football coach Bill Parcells. It's also the nickname for Robbie Allen's new book on Active Directory prescriptive advice and How-To's.
For those of us who have even a concept of what Active directory is, likely the name Robbie Allen has been either mentioned or you've read his posts and words of wisdom. Regardless, Robbie is not to be taken lightly. To paraphrase an old Investment Company commercial:
When Robbie Allen speaks, people listen.
That's just how authoritative he is. And, his mannerisms are not the 'in your face' type of advice. It's put out there, and you are left to try it, with Robbie's typical explanation of what it does, why it does it, and here's the outcome. And, make no mistake - Robbie has the experience to back up his advice. (His current gig is working as a Sr. Systems Engineer for Cicso - you may have heard of them - make a lot of really cool networking gear?) Rarely are you confused about what's happening with the topic of the moment, be it something as complex as File Replication in Active Directory and domain controllers, or as mundane as 'How do I join a new DC to an existing domain'? You leave with complete confidence that you now KNOW it - not just understand. Plus, to enrich the experience, he will typically toss some VBScript or Perl code (his personal favorite, it seems) in to use to either resolve the problem or just to illustrate the point. Masterful, to say the least.
The 'Tuna' Book
So, the question you might be asking at this point is why the heck am I slobbering all over this guy? You need to read his books to get a feel for that. I'll mention the new one in just a moment, but this isn't Robbie's first foray into writing. He also co-authored (with his partner in crime at Cisco, Richard Puckett) "Managing Enterprise Active Directory" from Addison-Wesley and updated the classic 'Cat' book (originally authored by Alistair G. Lowe-Norris) “Active Directory, 2/e” from O'Reilly.
So, this Tuna book - what the heck is that? As you're likely aware, O'Reilly uses these quaint animal drawings on the cover of all of their books. Hence, the Cat book - and now, the Tuna book. Yeah, it's got a picture of a big tuna on the cover. What the Tuna has to do with the book, I don't know (and, O'Reilly won't tell you WHY they choose a specific animal for a particular book - it's part of the mystique....).
Let's just say that the 'Tuna' book is an Active Directory FAQ on steroids. The true title is “Active Directory Cookbook for Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000”, and if this book is the cookbook to a happy and healthy Windows 2000 / Server 2003 directory services, count me in - for double helpings! In Robbie's typical style, the prose is easy to read (well, as easy as any technical book can be - I mean c'mon - this isn't a Tom Clancy novel....) and the examples and prescriptive methods are simply fantastic. The book is broken up into specific chapters dealing with subjects ranging from Schema to Deployment, Replication to Security - and all in a recipe for success format that has made the O'Reilly format successful. In each 'recipe' you will find a succinct explanation of what the problem is, the desired outcome and solutions - scripted, command line, and GUI (where applicable). In some cases, these tips are not published anywhere else.
If you are serious about the Administration and Management of Active Directory outside of the common GUI click here, click here, then click 'OK' - this book is truly for you. If you have always wanted to venture outside of the mundane world of GUI, or need to script a task to make it automated, faster, or just more accurate - this book is for you. If you simply want to get deeper into Active Directory, there are going to be things that you didn't know in this book. And, if you are diving head first into Windows Server 2003, don't jump without this book. Tuna swim, remember? This book will save your butt when it's crunch time!
Rick Kingslan
Microsoft MVP - Active Directory