IT Book Recommendations?
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I am still in my first year of being more than a level 1 help desk tech. Google and Spiceworks get me through the break/fix issues pretty well, but I have started reading IT books on specific topics to get a more thorough understanding of the underlying technology and hopefully set my systems up for success throughout upgrades, maintenance etc. I'm also trying to learn about the basics of lots of things before settling on a specialization...
I'm hoping for some recommendations on books that help to round out a relatively green IT administrator's knowledge of how and why things work. Some examples of what I mean:
Servers for Hackers by Chris Fidao - When I'm not working as an IT admin, I develop WordPress sites for small businesses and nonprofits. This book was a huge help in acquiring the knowledge I needed to properly build and maintain Linux VMs running WordPress on nginx.
Networking for System Administrators by Michael W. Lucas - I'm reading through this right now because the details of networking have been an arcane mystery to me and I'm hoping to eventually be comfortable implementing pfSense. Since there's no concrete timetable on that, I figured I may as well learn the basics of networking itself instead of relying on tutorials or things like the pfSense Cookbook. Lucas does a good job explaining the basics of many very complex things, along with the tools to figure out which of those things is malfunctioning when there's a network problem.
So, are there any good books you remember reading that helped jumpstart your understanding on a particular IT topic? I'd love to find a good primer on virtualization in particular, but really anything that is well-written is awesome. Bonus if they're on Safari Books Online!
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Lots of that stuff (especially VM's) can be done hands on for cheap or free. Highly recommend that, nothing has helped me learn faster.
I know Scott buys lots of books from something or other site - I dunno, he'll probably chime in.
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I buy directly from the publishers
That's the big secret, cut out the middle men. But the bulk of them I buy from O'Reilly who owns the Safari Bookshelf. -
@MattSpeller said:
Lots of that stuff (especially VM's) can be done hands on for cheap or free. Highly recommend that, nothing has helped me learn faster.
I know Scott buys lots of books from something or other site - I dunno, he'll probably chime in.
True enough, I got to show some of my friends the magic of VirtualBox a couple months ago and it made me realize how much I had learned just from fiddling with it in my spare time. I also have a spare server running a couple of Linux VMs off of XenServer ... I guess I'm just hoping there's an awesome book out there that describes how it works so I can understand the theory behind it a bit more. It's my top choice in terms of specialization right now so I'd like to be able to really understand it.
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I don't care for books, Everytime I've tried them they were outdated by the time it was published to some degree. Blogs and youtube will give you quality information if you know how to curate it.
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@WingCreative Go check out the completely unrelated thread that got off topic onto VM's. I learned stuff from that thread that like the op, I found mind blowing. Then go look up what the technical juicy differences between type 1 and 2 HV's, and you'll have put in a good day's effort! (this is coincidently what I've been doing since I read about it heheh)
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@thecreativeone91 said:
I don't care for books, Everytime I've tried them they were outdated by the time it was published to some degree. Blogs and youtube will give you quality information if you know how to curate it.
Although the argument for books is that the material that you should be getting from them is foundational and should not be outdated anytime soon. A lot of good material from the 1980s is still completely relevant today. I'm amazing how much of what I learned is from the 1990s, all my base IT knowledge, including virtualization, UNIX, programming and storage, is from the 90s. IT doesn't change very quickly, in reality.
What you get from YouTube or searching is fine, but it is very rare that you get the big scope foundational things that you need and instead get how to deal with under the hood technical details. That's important, but it can result in knowing "how" to do things but not knowing "why" or "when."
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@scottalanmiller said:
Although the argument for books is that the material that you should be getting from them is foundational and should not be outdated anytime soon. A lot of good material from the 1980s is still completely relevant today.
True. I guess I forget that was what I did back in highschool before youtube and blogs were used haha.
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@thecreativeone91 said:
I don't care for books, Everytime I've tried them they were outdated by the time it was published to some degree. Blogs and youtube will give you quality information if you know how to curate it.
That's fair, I tend to browse for books that are actively being updated with new information or provide a general enough overview that nothing substantial should change. Otherwise I apply a more extreme version of the same rule I had when I was finding psychological research sources for essays... anything over 3 years old is probably outdated in some aspects but might still have some useful information in it, just need to make sure nothing more recent directly contradicts it after reading.
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Currently working on Code Complete by Steve McConnell. It is a little dated but great information on the basics of software development that are always relevant. Great read for anyone looking at doing any programing in any language.
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@s.hackleman said:
Currently working on Code Complete by Steve McConnell. It is a little dated but great information on the basics of software development that are always relevant. Great read for anyone looking at doing any programing in any language.
I've got that one. It's a classic.
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Anyone here used ITPro.TV?
I read here recently that most of you seem to dislike Lynda.com, and I'm at a loss for the one you liked...
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How has this not been mentioned yet?
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004JLMUJ0 -
@Dashrender said:
Anyone here used ITPro.TV?
I read here recently that most of you seem to dislike Lynda.com, and I'm at a loss for the one you liked...
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This is the one I've read and is written in a very basic but informational way.
