Linux.com: SysAdmin to SysAdmin: NIS End-of-Life and LDAP

“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…?”

Complete
Story