ADSMer's

I apologize for using the list for this, but I've had an overwhelming
response to the mail about our Student Guide.  As a result, we are currently
working on a process for taking orders.  The printing costs and distribution
costs are considerable, so there will be a TBD charge for the guide.
Although we've attempted to keep it as brief as possible, the guide has
grown to 236 pages in the present revision.

Our distributor is R&D Performance in Simi Valley.  For now, please send
mail to info AT rdperf DOT com.  Later, we may have a web site to allow 
ordering.
I am forwarding all the mail messages that I've already received to R&D and
they will be informing you of the price when it's determined.

It's important to us that anyone who goes to the effort to get the guide
finds it useful, so I hope to explain a bit about it below.  It's been an
excellent guide for the ADSM course that we give in Colorado Springs each
month and for the courses we've taught across the country, but I've never
attempted to have anyone who wasn't in the course use it.  Perhaps some of
the students that have taken the course will care to comment.

The course has been approved by IBM and is taught by ADSM certified
consultants.  It is considerably different than the IBM course, however.

The guide was written by two people in our company, Kelly Lipp and Laura
Buckley, over the past year.  You know Kelly from his active participation
on this list, but he's on vacation right now.  Both are practicing ADSM
consultants rather than professional instructors, and the guide covers the
steps they use towards building a real ADSM server.

The guide is based on V3 with an appendix about the differences from V2.  It
does not cover any of the advanced features, agents, or specifics of client
file systems.  The purpose of the guide is list the basic steps to
implementing a reliable server in a logical progression.  Each chapter has
exercises that are vital to the understanding of each subject.

Most of the examples use the web administrative GUI.  Each chapter also
shows the necessary command line diagrams for the commands covered in the
chapter, for those who prefer the command line interface.  All of the
examples are from an NT server, with occasional references to other
platforms.

My personal feeling is that you'd get more from attending the course, but as
a couple of you pointed out, that isn't always a viable option.  I get a lot
of satisfaction teaching the course to people who have been using ADSM but
just didn't understand how or why they were doing certain things.

Bill Smoldt
SSSI (Storage Solutions Specialists, Inc.)
Smoldt AT storsol DOT com
719-488-1997