[goodweeds]

This is an incredibly loaded question, but I'd start with The Practice Of Systems And Network Administration by Tom Limoncelli. You're not going to find some magic book that answers all of your questions. Like every other technical challenge it requires an incredible amount of research, tinkering, experience to build the domain expertise.

Outsource to someone who knows what they're doing and focus on your product.

[caw]

Speaking as a sysadmin (hi /.), is this something that people might be interested in on a wider scale? I'm thinking either a book with the mile high overview of several technologies (ie here's your generic chef,cfengine,puppet configuration tips & setup all in one place), or something that automagically makes your configs for you after answering some questions on a webform?