Understanding NIS data migration

Server for NIS allows Network Information Service (NIS) map data to be migrated to Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS).

After the migration, and upon receiving NIS requests from clients or other servers, Server for NIS searches AD DS to reply to NIS queries.

Migration consists of the following three steps:

  1. Migrate the NIS maps to a Windows-based server.

    • Using the command line

      Identity Management for UNIX includes a command-line tool called nis2ad to migrate maps from UNIX-based NIS servers to AD DS–based Server for NIS.

    • Using the migration wizard

      The NIS Data Migration wizard in Identity Management for UNIX extracts the information necessary to perform the migration. Even when using the migration wizard, however, you must complete steps 2 and 3, which follow.

    The migration wizard and the nis2ad command read map data from NIS map source files, which are the plain text files from which the NIS map databases are compiled. These source files must be located in a location that can be accessed by the domain controller during migration, such as on a disk on the domain controller or in a shared directory accessible by the domain controller.

  2. Inform the existing subordinate (also known as slave) NIS servers of the new master NIS server.

    After the migration, the original UNIX-based NIS server must send an update of maps to all subordinate NIS servers with the name of the new master server in the maps.

  3. Disable the original NIS server.

UNIX-based subordinate NIS servers can continue to work as before; however, they receive map updates from the Windows-based computer instead of the UNIX-based computer. Client computers continue to get NIS maps or data from the new master.

In this section

Table Of Contents