Re: Multisubnet NIS slave options

["Stephen P. Potter" <spp@spotter.yi.org>]

Lightning flashed, thunder crashed and "Shane B. Milburn" <milburn@panix.com> w
hispered:
| Here are the solutions we have come up with.
| 
| 1. Quad port cards in a couple of Ultra60's or even an
|    x86 box. But as the number of subnets grows I'll
|    need more machines/computer room space for the NIS slaves.
| 
| 2. Use the "-ypset" option on the clients to allow them
|    to bind across the router. We have about 60 machines
|    per subnet so I'm not sure how this would affect the
|    router.
 
Ideally, you want to have two NIS servers (either the master and a slave,
or two slaves) on each subnet for redundancy.  I would be very worried
about using a single box as a slave for so many subnets.  What happens when
that box goes down?  I also don't like the idea of using ypset for much the
same reason.  If the server that the clients are bound to goes down, there
is no way for them to rebind to another server, someone has to do it
manually.

To really come up with a good solution for you would require intimate
knowledge of your network.  You need to know what kinds of machines you
have on each subnet, and how they are utilized.

Do you have any machines on those subnets that currently act as some other
kind of server (mail, print, news, nfs, application, whatever) that could
serve double duty?  Set up a couple of those per subnet.  The load that NIS
puts on a machine in very negligable, and since you can have multiple
slaves, you can make several boxes be slaves to distribute the load.

Ultra60s would be far over powered for this kind of service.  I'd suggest a
couple of U5s, or even look at the new Sun Cobolt systems.  Their low end
systems clock in at under $1k, probably even lower if you have a discount
structure.  If you are worried about space, these are only a couple of U,
and rack mountable.  You could set up several of these, and have them cross
several subnets.  You might have to add more servers as you add more
subnets, but not on a one-to-one ratio.

-spp