NIS/LDAP Gateway Administrator's Guide

1 Overview of NIS/LDAP Gateway
This chapter provides a high level overview of what the NIS/LDAP Gateway product is and how
it works.
The NIS/LDAP Gateway is a Network Information Service (NIS) server that uses an LDAP
directory as its information source instead of NIS map files. The Gateway accepts NIS client
requests for information, gets the information from an LDAP directory, and returns the
information to the NIS clients. It effectively replaces your NIS servers and map files with an
NIS/LDAP Gateway server and an LDAP directory. Existing NIS clients transparently use an
LDAP directory to resolve user, group, host and other information.Used in conjunction with
LDAP server technologies, such as Netscape/Red Hat Directory Server, the NIS/LDAP Gateway
can consolidate credentials and allow a single password per user to be shared among multiple
platforms and applications.The hierarchical and distributed nature of LDAP is substantially
more scalable than the flat, single domain policy of NIS. The NIS/LDAP Gateway allows your
organization to leverage the scalability and distributed nature of LDAP directory services, while
maintaining an existing NIS infrastructure.
NOTE: The NIS/LDAP Gateway does not include an LDAP directory server. You can obtain
Netscape Directory Server 6.21 or Red Hat Directory Server 7.x for HP-UX in HP-UX 11i
Foundation OE, Application Release CD or from http://www.hp.com/go/softwaredepot. Other
directories that support LDAP can also be used with this product.
Comparing NIS and NIS/LDAP Gateway
This section describes the NIS/LDAP Gateway environment, compares it to NIS, and gives an
overview of the steps for migrating to the NIS/LDAP Gateway.
[LINEBREAK] [LINEBREAK] The following diagram shows a typical NIS environment:
Comparing NIS and NIS/LDAP Gateway 13