PowerScale OneFS 9.8.0.0 Web Administration Guide

NIS

The Network Information Service (NIS) provides authentication and identity uniformity across local area networks. OneFS includes an NIS authentication provider that enables you to integrate the cluster with your NIS infrastructure.

NIS, designed by Sun Microsystems, can authenticate users and groups when they access the cluster. The NIS provider exposes the passwd, group, and netgroup maps from an NIS server. Hostname lookups are also supported. You can specify multiple servers for redundancy and load balancing.

Each NIS provider must be associated with a groupnet. The groupnet is a top-level networking container that manages hostname resolution against DNS nameservers and contains subnets and IP address pools. The groupnet specifies which networking properties the NIS provider will use when communicating with external servers. The groupnet associated with the NIS provider cannot be changed. Instead you must delete the NIS provider and create it again with the new groupnet association.

You can add an NIS provider to an access zone as an authentication method for clients connecting through the access zone. An access zone may include at most one NIS provider. The access zone and the NIS provider must reference the same groupnet. You can discontinue authentication through an NIS provider by removing the provider from associated access zones.