Exam Ref 70-410: Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012 by Craig Zacker, Microsoft Press

 December 21, 2012

This in not an O’Reilly book, even if you have found it on the O’Reilly website. In fact this book has been published by the Microsoft Press. Maybe this is a good thing, since we are talking about Windows Server, one of the main Microsoft products. Who can speak about Windows better than its creator?

As the title may suggest, this book is tailored to the preparation of the Microsoft 70-410 exam. On the exam topic, I have to advice that the book does cover any exam objective, but does not cover every exam question.

The organization of the book seems really reasonable to me. The first chapter will help you to install and configure correctly Windows Server 2012. The second chapter will help you to configure users and roles. The third chapter speaks about virtualisation. The forth chapter is about networking and the fifth about Active Directory. The sixth and last chapter deals with Group Policy.

A thing I liked about this book is the presence of questions (with detailed answers). What is improvable for these question is the number. I think they should put way more questions. So, the questions, are a good idea not well implemented.

The only thing I hoped to see on this book but is missing is the emphasis on the security. I would have added a full chapter on security. It may be covered in some other book/exam or not, I’ve not yet searched.

I would definitely suggest this book to everyone is willing to take the Microsoft 70-410 exam. I would also suggest the book to anyone is interested to understand deeply Windows Server 2012. Even if Windows Server 2012 is very similar to Windows 8, I would not suggest this book for the user that wants to use better Windows 8; there are better books for this kind of usage.

Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program