Acknowledgments

With any writing effort, there is always a huge sacrifice of time that must be made to properly research, demonstrate, and describe leading edge subject matter. The brunt of the burden usually falls on those many people that are near and very dear to me. With this in mind, I desperately need to thank my family for allowing me to encroach on many months of what should have been my family's “quality time.”

However, with sacrifice also comes reward in the form of technical excellence and solid business relationships. Many individuals were involved in this effort, both directly and indirectly. Starting with my technology leaders network of Ray Rankins, Jack McElreath, Walter Kuketz, and John Williams, who offered ideas and comments in the early stages of development. Richard Waymire (of Microsoft) for his early critique on the book proposal itself. Dave Wickert (of Microsoft) and Carl Rabeler (Network Systems One, Inc.) for their review and edits of the high availability ramifications of analysis services. Collaborative Consulting (Boston, MA) contributed hardware and time from their exceptional system infrastructure team of Don Gingras and Bob Germain for some of the cluster services configuration setup. Hewlett Packard, whose hardware worked flawlessly throughout.

Additional thanks must also go to Gary Dunn and Jose Solera of Intel Corporation; Marco Giammarinaro of Gem of the Sea Brewing Company (for technology help, not beer!); Dan Parkinson and Cathy Mygrant of Mygrant Glass Company; Steve Luk, Martin Sommer, and Eugene Vilain; Howard Sardis of Backroads; and MC for technology verification and other support (moral and technical) on this effort. Thanks guys!

Many good suggestions and comments came from the technical and copy editors at Sams Publishing, yielding an outstanding effort. Songlin, George, and Neil sure know how to put an exceptional book on the shelves.

—Paul Bertucci