Monday, July 14, 2003		Book Review

THE Internet has made the world a global village. Inter-networking of this world is possible only through servers. Thousands of them, all around the globe, are serving the Internet users. Server’s job is to handle bits of data, act as a bridge and aid the users to work fast, better and in cost-effective manner.

These machines, however, come with a heavy price tag. To overcome the price issue, the book under review provides marvellous techniques for building an own personal server, which can be helpful to an individual as well as to small business groups. The book is interactive and the author discusses his own experiences of building servers and provides some tips at end of the chapter.

Part I of the book details out a server’s architecture, stepwise. Chapter I, the Anatomy of a server, is where each component is discussed individually while outlining their respective importance in the server. This chapter mentions about different types of chassis, cabinets, motherboard, processors, RAMs, hard drives, network cards etc that are discussed with photographs and illustrations.

The author rightly points out that ‘One Man’s garbage is another Man’s Gold.’ The book provides reference material from where one can purchase second-hand components to fit into the server. There are online auctions sites available for the Internet users to purchase old parts. For example, ebay.com, microcenter.com etc. Though this section may not be useful to Indian readers yet one can purchase from market after thorough investigation.

The network operating system is the life and blood of any server and without this it is not possible to communicate with other workstations. There are a wide number of operating systems available in the market, which provide flexibility and security to the users. For example, Unix, Linux, Windows 2000 server and Windows server 2003. Although the book offers information about installation and configuration of Windows 2000 and 2003 server yet it fails to fulfil the needs of Unix and Linux operators.

Part II of the book provides in-depth information about building a server bit-by-bit. It starts with CPU and motherboards, which the book says are the heart of the machine. The finest feature is discussing the meticulous details of all components and their installation while building a server with detailed photographs and illustrations. The author has seemingly worked on each unit carefully to provide maximum knowledge to the readers.

Installation, configuration and troubleshooting of network operating system are discussed in Part III. The book gives detailed information about the installation of network operating system, i.e. how to boot by using a bootable floppy, making a dual-boot system and using the FDisk command. It also provides thorough information about the installation of Windows 2000 server and Windows server 2003.

Then comes the issue of network configuration. The book discusses placement IP address, configuring DNS settings, file server, print server, Web server and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server. The book is a boon for anyone who has a bit of interest in networking and hardware components.