"Last week we talked about the challenges of replacing Red Hat Linux 9. This week we'll look at another instance of how changing infrastructure options challenge adminstrators. Sun, the inventor of Network Information Service, has announced the end-of-life for NIS. This is a more heterogenous problem than the end of a single Linux distribution.
"Almost none of us work in a 100% Linux environment. We have EMC and NetApp appliances that authenticate users in order to get access to the files stored on them. We have Cisco switches and access points that authenticate users to get access to the network. We have groupware applications, Web servers, and mail servers which need a whole host of user information. Last but not least, we have Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and possibly other systems that need to authenticate users. All of these platforms work well with NIS. What happens now...?"
