Chapter 1 of my first ebook was released today by SolarWinds, the sponsoring company. Like all Realtime books, this one is released one chapter at a time with about a month to six weeks between chapter releases.

Being my first true book, I'm pretty excited about it. For you and your environment, its an overview of the topics and technologies SMB's and mid-market businesses need to start monitoring and management of their network infrastructure.

Get your free copy at: http://support.solarwinds.net/updates/MoreSoftware.cfm?Program=750

While you're there, take a look through the SolarWinds software. Although by trade I've worked more with servers over the years than network devices, I can say with confidence that the SolarWinds suite of tools is fantastic. Plus, they're designed for the smaller customer and priced to be affordable. I've been playing with them for a few months now and have been quite impressed.

What are they and what do they do? --
- Cirrus is a configuration management tool for databasing the device configuration for all your network devices.
- Orion is a tool for performance and traffic analysis as well as fault management and notification.
- Engineer's Toolset is a suite of many network-centric tools used to help identify and resolve problems on the network among other things.

UPDATE (gs, 3/13/07, 12:56p): I got so excited about the book's release today I neglected to include a run-down of what you can find in it. Here's the blurb and chapter breakdown:

This 4-chapter guide, specifically written for the network engineer, outlines real-world technologies and processes to implement centralized management and monitoring of your network infrastructure.

Using the OSI FCAPS network model as a framework, this guide will lead you through the critical components of fault, performance, configuration and security management, as well as provide detailed information on network troubleshooting and diagnostics.

Chapter 1: FCAPS, Network Management Fundamentals & Fault Management
Chapter 2: Performance Management
Chapter 3: Configuration Management and Security
Chapter 4: Network Troubleshooting & Diagnostics