Solaris book recommendation

[anomie]

I'm posting to solicit some recommendations for a well-rounded Solaris 9 or 10 sysadmin book. I realize a glut of new features were introduced with 10; I don't need a lot of details on dtrace, zfs, containers, etc. Once I am familiar with the way Solaris operates, I can get up to speed on the neat new 10 features.

It'd be nice if the book was geared toward sysadmins who are competent in other unix / unix-like OSes already.

I have a couple ideas based on personal conversations and online reviews:

Solaris Operating Environment Boot Camp, by David Rhodes, Dominic Butler
Solaris Solutions for System Administrators, by Sandra Henry-Stocker, Evan R. Marks


Any comments on either of these? Or any additional recommendations?

[cajunman4life]

I have Essential System Administration, 3rd edition which is a bit dated covering Solaris 9 but still a fairly good reference, and Sun Certified System Administrator for Solaris 10 Study Guide. I'm always looking for good books :) Any more suggestions?

[ocicat]

Or any additional recommendations?
Perhaps not quite what you are wanting, but for more theoretical discussions, consider the following:

Solaris Internals (http://www.amazon.com/Solaris-Internals-TM-OpenSolaris-Architecture/dp/0131482092/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b) -- covers kernel architecture, etc.
Solaris Performance & Tools (http://www.amazon.com/Solaris-Performance-Tools-Techniques-OpenSolaris/dp/0131568191/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215471186&sr=1-1) -- covers DTrace, Modular Debugger (MDB), dynamic tracing, & other goodies...

[anomie]

I have Essential System Administration, 3rd edition which is a bit dated covering Solaris 9 but still a fairly good...

:smacks forehead:

I do too -- thanks for the reminder. The last time I read it I was focused on the FreeBSD and GNU/Linux specifics. I'll take a look again, this time as a Solaris reference.

[anomie]

Perhaps not quite what you are wanting, but for more theoretical discussions, consider the following...

Thanks -- I noticed that Solaris Performance and Tools received good reviews on amazon. This is probably the next step for me once I understand Solaris better in general.

[ephemera]

also, check out the Sun documentation: http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/prod/solaris.10

it's pretty comprehensive though it makes for dry reading. you can use it as a reference.

misc links:

http://www.sun.drydog.com/
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/home/
http://www.princeton.edu/~unix/Solaris/troubleshoot/index.html
http://cuddletech.com/blog/
http://wikis.sun.com/display/BluePrints/

i can't recommend any Solaris book on sys-administration because i haven't read any. but i did read a lot of articles from various links. that along with sun docs and installing and playing around with solaris on my home computer is good enough to get me a Sun certification - not showing off, only want to say that if you find it interesting then you can learn quite a bit just by hacking, and that way its fun too.

[davidgurvich]

As you said, there were many changes between Solaris 9 & 10. I don't think there is a book that covers both well. The manuals available online are a great resource when combined with various blogs and wikis.

[tuck]

The only Solaris ressource I own is the Unix System Administration Handbook (http://www.amazon.com/UNIX-System-Administration-Handbook-covers/dp/0130206016/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books-intl-de&qid=1215524408&sr=8-2). The 4th edition disappeared from Amazon so I think it wont be published this or next year. The 3rd edition is cool though.

[anomie]

Thanks for the replies, folks.