Metasploit: The Penetration Tester’s Guide by David Kennedy, Jim O’Gorman, Devon Kearns, and Mati Aharoni (O’Reilly Media) is very detailed and extremely valuable in demonstrating how penetration testing can be done using Metasploit along with having the great side-benefit of being able to learn about general methods and processes a pentester will go through during the testing cycle (PTES methodology).
The initial chapters deal with introducing the reader to the PTES methodology and Metasploit as a testing product. As the chapters progress the authors pushes the reader deeper and deeper into the Metasploit product’s features along with how to use those features to complete the penetration test processes. In the appendix, the authors have provided instructions on how to configure test environments that can support your exploits without sending the Feds to your front door.
Overall, this book is an good resource for those people that have good technical skills in Ruby and are comfortable in a Linux environment that want to understand penetration testing and the Metasploit product.
Disclaimer: I received a free electronic copy of this book as part of the O’Reilly Blogger Program