If you want to do little bit more than the routine tasks on your Windows system, you need to understand the fundamentals of Windows system administration. The following are some of the essential Windows system administration books that are useful for both sysadmins and power users.
- PowerShell in Depth: An administrator’s guide, by Don Jones , Richard Siddaway, Jeffrey Hicks – If you ever thought about learning powershell to do administrative tasks from the command line, look no further. This is hands-down the best book in Windows powershell. Part 1 covers powershell fundamentals, part 2 covers powershell management, part 3 covers scripting and automation, part 4 covers advanced powershell with total of over 500 pages.
- Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2012, by Ross Mistry, Stacia Misner – This book is by microsoft press. This book is relatively short with 250 page, with 10 chapters, which is split into two parts. Part 1 covers database administration, and part 2 covers business intelligent development.
- Windows Administration Resource Kit, by Dan Holmes – This book is by microsoft press. The book is organized into 10 different solutions collections. For example, solutions collection #7 is about extending user attributes and management tools, which has various solutions related to the user attributes. This book is a must have for every Windows system administrator irrespective of what version of Windows server they are running.
- Microsoft Windows Networking Essentials, by Darril Gibson – While other sysadmin books tries to cover every aspects of a typical Windows sysadmin, this book focus specifically on Windows networking, and it covers every Windows networking aspects in full detail. This book was written for those who are intersted in taking the Microsoft Technology Associate Exam 98-366.
- Mastering Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, by Mark Minasi, Darril Gibson, Aidan Finn, Wendy Henry, Byron Hynes – This book is over 1300 pages divided into 30 chapters, which covers pretty much everything about Windows 2008 R2. There is also a chapter for server virtualization with Hyper-V
- Windows Server 2008 R2 Unleashed, by Rand Morimoto, Michael Noel, Omar Droubi, Ross Mistry, Chris Amaris – This book is over 1500 pages split into 11 chapters. This explains everything you need to know about Windows 2008 server administration in details. If you are still running a Windows 2008 R2 server, this book is essential for you to administer your system.
- Windows Server 2008 Inside Out, by William Stanek – This book is over 1400 pages divided into 6 parts. Part 1 covers overview and planning, part 2 covers essential configurations, part 3 covers storage and file systesm, part 4 covers networking and print services, part 5 covers active directory and security, part 6 covers disaster planning and recovery.
- How to Cheat at Windows System Administration Using Command Line Scripts, by Pawan K. Bhardwaj, Dave Kleiman, Brian Barber, Kimon Andreou – This books explains how you can do all the regular windows tasks in command line. This also explains how you can perform all system administration tasks from command line. If you are from Linux background, and love command line, you might find this book helpful.
- Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Cookbook, by Leandro Carvalho – This is one of the very few good books that talks in details about Hyper-V virtualization on Windows. This is a very small book with only less than 300 pages, but covers all the essential chapters including monitoring, tuning, and troubleshooting Hyper-V.
- Windows Server 2012 Inside Out, by William Stanek – This is by microsoft press. This book has over 1400 pages arranged in 5 parts. Part 1 covers overview, part 2 covers sever management, part 3 covers storage and file systems, part 4 covers networking and domain server, part 5 covers active directory and security. If you are running a Windows 2012 server, you should have this book for handy reference.
