Learn SQL Server Administration in a Month of Lunches: Covers Microsoft SQL Server 2005-2014

As an accidental DBA, I am so glad I bought this book. I wish I had bought it earlier! So many of the lessons I learned in my 5 previous months managing DBs at my work could have been helped along much quicker. Working through the book now, I am learning why so many things work the way they do. And it isn't so mysterious. DBs used to be my most dreaded area in the IT arena, but now I'm learning that things are not so complicated.

Great stuff. I am learning a lot about SQL Administration with this book.

All of the books by Don Jones are outstanding and Manning does an excellent job, especially their "Manning Early Access Program" books.

helped out a lot, just like their power shell series, not great but not bad.

The book is well sequenced and material is broken down into sections so as to allow the reader to progress through chapters it at their own pace.

Excellent read and reference book! Don Jones and his "Month of Lunches" format wins again!

SQL Server administration in a month of lunches is targeted at "the Reluctant DBA”, i.e. the person in the organization that administers existing Microsoft products and gets asked to look after the database as well.I do not fit into that category but found the book to be a concise overview with some sound operational and troubleshooting advice on the key areas of SQL Server Administration covering topics from installation and virtualization, to maintenance and backups, to performance monitoring and index health.However, there are some things I didn’t like about the book. In the first few chapters the pace was really slow and in particular chapter 3 on T-SQL tried to cram in too much and didn’t accomplish what I think they were intending. Those familiar will SQL should skim or skip.Several other chapters, and topics, felt like they ended abruptly and redirected to recommended reading instead of going into what would have been interesting content. This may have been so it would fit in the month of lunches concept or because it’s aimed at being an introduction not a reference book but either way I wanted more.There was also a little of the "DBA vs Developer" rhetoric scattered throughout the book, which is unfortunate because there is some good practical advice on topics like authentication/authorization, scripting, indexing and performance monitoring that would be as applicable for a developer working with SQL Server as a reluctant DBA.

I am a reluctant DBA that was given the job responsibility and never had any formal training. That was 6yrs ago. I wish I had this book back then. Even though I have a good amount of experience with SQL Server I found this book to be very informative. I am not a sql server guru so this was a great book to fill in some cracks. The hands on labs and were very helpful in demonstrating some of the elements that I have not dealt with. Auditing was a very nice chapter to layout ways to audit what users are doing on the server. Indexes are covered in depth via three chapters. I learned how to backup an index, which I didn't know was possible. Profiler is also covered very well and is a super helpful too when debugging. The performance monitor section was also helpful as it did not just say 'do this', it gave why and what some of the stats you are looking for might mean. Didn't get into much in the way of TSQL but did get into a good amount of powershell, which is also a must in todays sql environments.

i'm not a dba , but I got on just fine with this book

A good basic starting point. Lots of info for the DBA by default level user

A very readable introduction to SQL Server Administration, with plenty of hands-on exercises. Recommended.

Wonderful book for learning SQL Administration, even if you are a beginner.

Un livre clair et utilise pour qui travaille avec SQL Server. Le fait d'avoir divisé le livre en chapitre autonomes, qu'on peut lire "pendant un lunch", est très sympa, et permet d'ingurgiter ou de rafraîchir ces notions par petites doses, bien digestes.