Rating: 

While taking the Red Hat course( RHA-230 )that covers many aspects of System administration I began my study of Bind and the nmaed service.

I decided I would set up a couple of DNS servers, each with a corresponding web and ftp sites. I used Red Hat Linux AS on one and the Centos clone ES4 on the other.

The web sites were easy enough to get going, but in order to get DNS working took more effort. After I read the manuals that ship with the Bind software, I spent many hours searching the web on DNS, but was unable to get my DNS servers working properly.

I googled for a good book on the subject and of course, O'Reilly was at the top of the list.

After looking at the various options here, I bought DNS and Bind , 5th edition from Borders Books.

This book is a great resource that covers Bind in a way that I could understand.

The book gives a good introduction to the subject of DNS. It explains the use and workings of the many tools used by Sysops to verify the operation of the service.

It gives real world examples on how to use dig, nslookup and host in ways never covered by the man pages.

After reading just 100 pages I was able to get both servers up and pointing to the correct web sites.

If you need working DNS servers and do not yet possess the expertise to build them, buy this book.