(Part 2) Best enterprise data computing books according to redditors
We found 606 Reddit comments discussing the best enterprise data computing books. We ranked the 112 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.
Here's my list of the classics:
General Computing
Computer Science
Software Development
Case Studies
Employment
Language-Specific
C
Python
C#
C++
Java
Linux Shell Scripts
Web Development
Ruby and Rails
Assembly
Should I change schools or programs
Well, I guess I'd need to hear more about what you're learning. I'd say "probably not". Systems Administration stuff is, at the moment, more easily learned on the job than in the classroom. What I really wish I'd have learned in school is more infrastructure engineering type things (for instance, "how do you determine the likelihood of a failure in the system when you know the failure rates for each of the components" type stuff), and more statistics. I'd also like to have taken standard CIS stuff like graph theory, information theory, algorithms, etc.
What books or resources would you recommend I read or look at?
Start with the standard tomes - "The Practice of System and Network Administration", "DNS and Bind", and "$X Programming" where $X is the operating system that you need to learn and understand the most. I'd also invest in a good networking book that teaches you how networking works, both IPv4 and IPv6. You may need to get 2 books for that one, but it'll be worthwhile. I enjoyed reading "Cisco: A Beginner's Guide", but I don't know if even the newest edition includes IPv6. For that, I haven't read any great books. I read IPv6 Essentials, but it wasn't amazing, though it did help. Learn IPv6, though. Seriously.
What kinds of certifications do you recommend
I think this depends greatly on what you want to do and who you want to work for. Some big companies won't hire you without them. Some little companies are really impressed by them. Some companies know that some certifications aren't worth the paper they aren't printed on. It all depends. What do you REALLY want to do? Networking? The best, most respected networking folks I know are CCIEs or JNCIE. To do that, you need the entry level certification of those tracks first. The best, most respected UNIX admins I know don't have any certifications. The best, most respected Windows administrators I know...well, actually, I don't know a ton of Windows administrators, but I would like to know more of them. So if someone reading this is a Windows administrator, maybe they can tell you if the MCP program is well respected in the industry. I imagine it is.
What projects would you suggest I take on
Start with your comfort zone, and expand past that. You had a seedbox and a dedicated game server. You have made HTPCs. Maybe you could make a storage backend server that the HTPC connects to for media. Or multiple HTPCs connect to for media. That would get your feet wet in networking, a little bit in storage, and a little bit in providing services.
Once you get it working on the platform that you know, convert it to the platform that you don't know. If your first one is in Windows, after you get it working in Windows, try to get it working in Linux the same way. Then push forward. Maybe try to add some flair to it and set up centralized authentication, or start your own home DNS server so you can make the HTPC resolve internally. Or you could find some software to display the content in a website, then set up a web server. Once that works, for bonus points, set up a certificate authority and enable SSL.
Each time you do something new, you should learn something new. Use that. Take notes. I'm biased, but maybe you should start blogging your efforts. That has the double benefit of keeping notes for yourself and sharing what you're doing with other people, so they can learn too.
What projects should I take on
Pretty similar to the above question, but maybe you could be more forward thinking. Remember how I said "Learn IPv6" above? Why not make an IPv6 lab, where you play with it (both pure IPv6 and dual stack, because dual stack is important now and pure will eventually be important).
Final Thoughts
The single most valuable skill I ever acquired was the ability to learn quickly. It's vital in our field, because nothing is static. Don't get into the field thinking that things will always be the same, or that what happened yesterday is any indication of what happens tomorrow. Learning fast allows you to keep up. This almost always necessitates reading fast, and having a high comprehension. Those things can be taught, and they can be acquired by practice. If your school gives you access to Safari Books Online, then use it. If they don't, then take the initiative and make them provide it. Talk to the dean, write petitions, etc, because it's one of the most valuable resources available on the internet, and they SHOULD provide it to you.
Also, learn to program. You don't have to be amazing, but you should learn to program. We are quickly entering a time in system administration where we are developers more than tinkerers, and that's a good thing. Infrastructure itself is becoming code, and what I mean by that is the instructions we give to servers to do certain things is fading away from the idea of setting a configuration variable and moving to the idea of writing a small piece of code in configuration management software to make the change happen. Research Puppet, Chef, and CFEngine to see what I mean. We are going to be developers, even if it's infrastructure developers, and the best of us will be those people who think clearly, logically, and are able to communicate that through the tools used to assert change.
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet https://www.amazon.com/dp/B006FOHWDI/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_yJKxCbNR7YNG4
According to the book Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet, a key moment in the development of the modern Internet was the US government's funding of a series of Network Access Points (NAPs) to interconnect multiple networks. This funding was sponsored by Al Gore, who never claimed to have invented the Internet but was an early champion of legislation that created the Internet.
I've posted this before but I'll repost it here:
Now in terms of the question that you ask in the title - this is what I recommend:
Job Interview Prep
Junior Software Engineer Reading List
Read This First
Fundementals
Understanding Professional Software Environments
Mentality
History
Mid Level Software Engineer Reading List
Read This First
Fundementals
Software Design
Software Engineering Skill Sets
Databases
User Experience
Mentality
History
Specialist Skills
In spite of the fact that many of these won't apply to your specific job I still recommend reading them for the insight, they'll give you into programming language and technology design.
Comer's stuff is what helped me. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0130183806/
You are probably like me and need more background to understand things. Comer was part of creating the Internet and was chosen to write a book to document the technology IIRC.
"This edition explains emerging technologies such as Mobile IP, Virtual Private Networks, resource reservation with RSVP, and Ipv6."
"I would tell you a UDP joke but I'd never know whether or not you got it."
I agree with OP. If you are looking for a good architecture book(s), beside fowlers, I've enjoyed
designing data intensive applications by M. Kleppmann https://dataintensive.net/
I really can't praise Kleppman's book enough.
> Yep. ... been trying to sign up since i got the email at work and i keep being put in a never ending cycle to update my profile.... yall should of know this would have blown up and been prepared
> Mark Darrah
> Verified account @BioMarkDarrah
> It wasn’t publicly announced for precisely this reason
Mr Darrah, please give this level 23 book to your web frontend people: https://www.amazon.com/Release-Design-Deploy-Production-Ready-Software/dp/1680502395/
They will be eternally grateful for it.
Among other things, it explains why "we'll just not advertise the link" is a non-viable strategy.
Also check out their IRC channels, forums, and mailing lists.
no problem, check out Johan Arwidmark's book for a great reference to deployments with MDT. Deployment Fundamentals
For Rails, pick up whatever edition of this series matches the version(s) you want to be familiar with. Keep in mind that learning Ruby and learning Ruby on Rails aren't exactly the same thing.
I can't really imagine why you would want Rails and Java at the same time, as it would be faster to get comfortable with one and view the other as a sum of the differences instead of re-learning all the similarities.
https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Microsoft-Deployment-Toolkit-Stokes/dp/1782172491
If you have an Amazon Prime account.
https://www.amazon.com/Stealing-Pride-Vol-Customizations-ConfigMgr/dp/9187445034/
https://www.amazon.com/Deployment-Fundamentals-Vol-Deploying-Microsoft/dp/9187445212/
Links I found useful
https://mdtguy.wordpress.com/
https://deploymentresearch.com/
https://deploymentbunny.com/
When you inevitably go down the rabbit hole of customsettings.ini and bootstrap
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions//bb490304(v=technet.10)
Driver Injection and all the fun that comes with it
https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/116865-add-drivers-to-mdt-all-versions-total-control-method
It's a lot of links but I think all of them are worthwhile. Either way, Google is your friend when learning MDT. These are all pertinent links if you are serious about learning MDT.
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http://www.amazon.com/NX-OS-Cisco-Nexus-Switching-Next-Generation/dp/1587143046/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409263406&sr=8-1&keywords=nx-os
http://www.amazon.com/Data-Center-Virtualization-Fundamentals-Understanding/dp/1587143240/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1409263406&sr=8-4&keywords=nx-os
These are great read's, I reference them almost weekly whenever something weird pops up at work.
I can recommend this one. I'm not able to find a Current Branch version (I suspect there isn't one yet), but it should still be pretty relevant
https://www.amazon.com/System-Center-Configuration-Manager-Unleashed/dp/0672337150
I took the first test, and it was a complete breeze. I read the Todd Lammle book, but honestly I didn't have to.
If you work Nexus often, it is a breeze.
I plan to take the second exam sometime next week, and I've been reading the Cisco guide book to NX-OS.
> i can't find an electronic version on amazon
Really? I find that hard to believe.
I copy-pasted the title in Amazon, and immediately found the 6th edition, in both text and kindle format,
Distributed systems is definitely good to know for some kinds of machine learning. This is a standard intro text for distributed systems. I'd probably dive into something about parallel computing while you are at it too. And then high performance computing when you got the basics covered.
If you would like a more in depth explanation, a pretty good book was released not that long ago called Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet.
It explains how networks interconnect, how fibers are laid underwater, etc. I work in IT infrastructure so I thought it was a fun read and surprisingly well researched.
http://www.amazon.com/Tubes-A-Journey-Center-Internet/dp/0061994936
For more foundational stuff, I'd look at:
Getting familiar with these branching models will also expose you to many commonly-used Git features like branching, squash merging, rebasing, tagging, and history rewriting.
No one's really gonna ask you about this, but you should develop a habit of writing great, clear, and concise commit messages.
All the rage right now - having real/near-real time building/unit-testing/packaging/deployment of your software once you've made a code commit. Read the articles I linked, play with services like CircleCI or Travis-CI or CodeShip and integrate them with your projects in GitLab.
Probably the two most commonly used overarching test-based software development processes. I'm a strong proponent of TDD (when done right), and many teams you work on will probably employ TDD or BDD.
Beyond those links, some books that cover a lot of general material are:
Linked clones (persistent or non-persistent) come with the issues of being about to correctly thinapp all applications not on the base image, and handling user profiles (with persistent disks, or persona mgmt). Dedicated VMs avoid these issues and allow for more flexibility at the cost of more disk space and management (manage them like PCs). I am currently trying to talk my boss out of using thin clients with linked clones instead of full PCs, because it adds extra management and user interruption, not decreasing it.
I'm going to buy this book: The VDI Delusion: Why Desktop Virtualization Failed to Live Up to the Hype, and What the Future Enterprise Desktop will Really Look Like
Anyway, it sounds like they are using View for remote users, which is a decent idea. PCOIP is supposed to be much better for WAN performance, so it might be a good idea (if you have extra time) to see if you can get that working and demo it.
https://www.amazon.com/IPv6-Essentials-Silvia-Hagen/dp/0596100582
Objective-C is a superset of C and so has a C base, although the syntax is different (mostly).
There are a few frameworks in Apple's library which are written in C but you may not need those.
I would recommend you use a game engine to write your game - particularly Cocos-2d, as it makes development quicker and easier.
As a previous poster has mentioned, Ray's website is very good at learning IOS programming and it also has good sections on Cocos-2d.
As for books, I can recommend: (I'm in the UK so I'll use amazon uk links).
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Cocos2D-Hands--Building-Addison-Wesley/dp/0321735625/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367517122&sr=8-1&keywords=cocos2d (Ray's own book)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Learn-cocos2d-Game-Development-iOS/dp/143024416X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1367517122&sr=8-2&keywords=cocos2d
Objective-c
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Programming-Objective-C-Automatic-Reference-Developers/dp/0321811909/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367517200&sr=1-5&keywords=ios+programming
Plus there are LOADS of good tutorials online.
System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (SCCM) Unleashed + R2 Update
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sccm/
I highly recommend installing, and testing in a lab environment as well. your first time installing it should not be your production server.
Some of the Official MS Training is not terrible either, though it is expensive if you are paying for it directly and if you get a decent / experienced instructor.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/course.aspx?cid=20696
Stealing with Pride from the best OSD leaders in the industry. Stealing with Pride, Vol. 1: Advanced OSD Customizations for MDT 2013 and ConfigMgr 2012 R2 https://www.amazon.com/dp/9187445034/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_NCqkzbV2DQ8P1
The best thing for you are old books from that time. And they're cheap.
You're just looking for books that are in the Rails 2.x range, as it'll be hard to be specific to 2.1, but Rails release notes will help you bridge the gap between specific point releases.
The third edition of Agile Web Development With Rails and the first edition of The Rails Way are both Rails 2.x books.
Here's also an old online Rails 2.1 tutorial to help you in the meantime, but don't try to just get by on the few old web tutorials that are still online. Order books today. They're much deeper and broader than a web tutorial and they'll be invaluable if you're going to be working on this project for any real period of time.
EDIT: Michael Hartl's fantastic railstutorial.org has the "pre-1st edition" version of his book, which covers Rails 2.3, still available for free PDF download. Definitely grab that.
Absolute FreeBSD: The Complete Guide to FreeBSD, 2nd Edition
I found this book to be very good. It's technical but the Author manages to explain complex concepts in straight forward ways.
Internetworking-TCP-Vol-1-Principles-Architecture
Distributed Systems is a fast growing field better understood in practice, I believe. There are good books around such as this but most of them are lagging behind. Conference papers are somewhat more popular nowadays but it is quite easy to get lost on the search.
My advice would be to get a quick overview from material proposed by others here and then go practical and try to model and implement distributed systems abstractions such as reliable broadcast, atomic registers, consensus and atomic broadcast. You can get a nice almost up-to-date overview of such abstractions here (totally recommended) while implemention-wise I would suggest actor based programming such as using Erlang (top-notch fun tutorial) or Scala Akka. If you know Java you can implement components using a message-passing component model such as Kompics. Do not hesitate to pm if you need help in the way! :)
Sort of? I highly recommend this book, it was a great read!
Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet
I would recommend reading the following book from Cisco Press which goes into great detail about howto configure CUCM and Unity Connection. However, about 25% of the book will be useless to you because it covers the legacy Cisco Unity which ran on Windows.
Link: Configuring Cisco Communications Manager and Unity Connection
If you go the MDT route, I can recommend Deployment Fundamentals Vol. 5 as a good resource for a ton of tips/tricks to shave off time setting it up for production.
http://amzn.com/9187445093
I have not read read this book personally, but I read a lot of reviews waiting to board a plane thinking I was going to buy it on my Kindle. Anyways, it seems like what you are looking for:
http://www.amazon.com/Tubes-A-Journey-Center-Internet/dp/0061994936/ref=pd_sim_b_9
I've heard good things about this book although I haven't actually read it yet- http://www.amazon.com/Configuring-Unified-Communications-Manager-Connection/dp/1587142260/ref=pd_sim_b_1
https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Microsoft-Deployment-Toolkit-Stokes/dp/1782172491
Shameless plug. I think MDT is going the way of the dodo tbh. Autopilot on 10 seems the bees knees these days.
Don't worry, it is a bit of a confusing first few steps as it can do a lot of things however getting it to do the basics isn't too hard as there are plenty of guides out there.
Do check on the needed prerequisites though as you may want to download them over the weekend, the biggest (and I think only hard requirement for MDT2013), is the Windows ADK:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=39982
There's a basic guide to getting MDT installed and setup here:
http://blog.itvce.com/2013/10/27/installing-and-configuring-microsoft-deployment-toolkit-mdt-2013-on-windows-server-2012-r2/
Although it references imaging server 2012 you should be able to do mostly the same steps but using a Win 7 or 8 image instead.
If you want a book to reference from give this a look, I've not read it but I've got the SCCM book by the same group of authors and it was really helpful, so assuming their MDT one is of similar quality it may be worth a look:
http://amzn.com/9187445093
Indeed. I recently read The VDI Delusion, and was pretty astounded by it.
They basically took all of the very worst-case scenarios, and presented them as if that were all that there was, completely ignoring the best-case scenarios. Sure, if you fit those worst-case scenarios, they're right. But for some scenarios, it is an absolute DREAM.
In our call center, specifically, we were in a position where we had to upgrade all of the desktops. VDI, including some additional networking, ran us about 20% more up front than simply replacing the desktops - but we reduced our support by about 90%. Not just in a "we don't do as much" sort of way, but in a "We eliminated our desktop support person" sort of way. He moved on to other stuff, and I spend about an hour each weak on the VDI installation. User experience for them, thanks to running the VMs on SSDs, is quite snappy and pleasant.
Staffing increases are a dream. The call center can buy their own PCoIP clients and plug them in. Within a few minutes, they have talked to the config server, updated their firmware, set admin passwords, updated config, rebooted, and they're ready to roll. I no longer even have to touch desktop hardware for them. So, last year when they expanded by nearly twice as much as projected, my only extra efforts were to create twice as many user accounts, and set the View Horizon provisioning pools to a larger number of VMs.
The power savings have been enormous as well, and I have measurements to back it up.
But, on the flip side, I HAVE NOT moved the rest of my company to VDI - and probably won't. They're not the right use-case for it.
I used excerpts from this textbook in one of my classes and it seemed pretty thorough if not brief: http://www.amazon.com/Distributed-Systems-Concepts-Design-Edition/dp/0132143011/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1371163267&sr=8-5&keywords=distributed+computing
Also this one: http://www.amazon.com/Distributed-Systems-Principles-Paradigms-Edition/dp/0132392275/ref=pd_sim_b_1
When I first started in college this one one of the first sources I went to as well. After a bit of research I stumbled upon this.
http://www.amazon.com/Internetworking-TCP-Vol-1-Principles-Architecture/dp/0130183806/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322702929&sr=1-8
This was quite possibly one of the best books I've ever purchased when it comes to the fundamentals of networking and was just updated a few days ago. I have the link below in my previous post and if you really want to learn networking I highly recommend you buying it.
Even better: http://www.amazon.com/Whole-Internet-Catalog-Nutshell-Handbook/dp/1565920252/
What are the position's responsibilities? What is the environment like (number of workstations/servers)? Is there already an SCCM environment in operation? If so, is it 2007/2012/2012 SP1/2012 R2? Is there a team supporting SCCM or would it just be you?
If you're going to be the admin, packaging expect, deployment admin, and sole tech support and you have no experience yourself...that'll be a big learning curve. It's not impossible, but it'll be a lot of research.
Microsoft's Virtual Academy is great.
If you like books, the "Mastering" and "Unleashed" books are two of my favorites. There's a lot of great blogs out there for System Center, too--System Center Central is my default stop, but of course /r/sccm is great too!
And for any questions that you can't get answered via any of those methods, the Technet forums are invaluable. You'll get to be on a first name basis with some of the MVPs, they're phenomenal.
The Whole Internet
I had done just a little bit of Python (like, a few weeks of tinkering) before I got started with Objective C. I read some of Kochan's book Programming with Objective C whilst also reading some of Learning Cocos2D, but ultimately I just started playing, getting stuck and hitting the interwebs to get unstuck (reading lots, not spamming forums). I'm about 8 months in and I think I'm about 3 months from releasing my first game.
With my limited experience my advice would be to pick a simple project that you're genuinely interested in, chop it up into little problems / tasks, and work through them. If you're totally stuck, you probably need to cut that task up into smaller pieces. Work hard, read a lot, take a break occasionally, write a blog or diary so you can track your own progress, and have fun!
Starting iOS development is one of the best things I've ever done, although I'm not sure the missus would agree!
Haha guess I saw the "tipsy" and checked out after that! My focus is functional programming, so most of my recommendations are around that.
LambdaCast and The REPL are good and worth listening through (full disclosure I was on the REPL).
Other casts that I cherry-pick through:
Some good books:
You should also check out hillelogram and his talks/podcasts/writing on TLA+ if you're not familiar.
Do you have any good recommendations?
You want this:
https://www.amazon.com/Configuring-Unified-Communications-Manager-Connection/dp/1587142260/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493214210&sr=8-1&keywords=cisco+cucm
there's this book - https://www.amazon.com/NX-OS-Cisco-Nexus-Switching-Next-Generation/dp/1587143046
I have a copy..in fact it's sitting on my desk. I've used it some in the past as a reference. It's been a while...I think it was OK as a reference. It's not specifically troubleshooting but seems a decent reference book.
> There might be a more up to date version
Would that be this one?
How big is the client? If they can't afford licensing, I am guessing they are small, and probably don't need VDI. RDS will probably be a more pertinent solution.
Great book on VDI (not all negative as the title may suggest)
The VDI Delusion - Brian Madden
edit:spelling
He also got a book out: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005E03MMY/
I bought it and can recommend.
Another book I got this here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006FOHWDI/ But I haven't started yet.
Internetworking with TCP/IP Vol.1: Principles, Protocols, and Architecture (4th Edition)
Jan 18, 2000 by Douglas E. Comer
http://www.amazon.com/Internetworking-TCP-Vol-1-Principles-Architecture/dp/0130183806/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1420826585&sr=8-6&keywords=tcp+ip
here
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textbook from class rated 2.5 stars due to the number of errors lol