Determine Resource Availability

Determine what administrative resources are required for the implementation. These are above and beyond the resources required for normal operation of NIS+. If your transition involves a long period of NIS+ and NIS compatibility, additional resources may be required.

Consider not only the implementation of the namespace design, but also conversion for the numerous clients and dealing with special requests or problems. Keep in mind that NIS+ has a steep learning curve. Administrators may be less efficient for awhile at performing support functions with NIS+ than they were with NIS. Consider not only formal training, but extensive lab sessions with hands-on experience.

Finally, even after the transition is complete, administrators will require extra time to become familiar with the everyday work flow of supporting NIS+.

Consider hardware resources. NIS servers are often used to support other network services, such as routing, printing, and file management. Because of the potential load on an NIS+ server, you should use dedicated NIS+ servers. This load-balancing simplifies the transition because it simplifies troubleshooting and performance monitoring. Of course, you incur the cost of additional systems. The question of how many servers you will need and how they should be configured is addressed in Chapter 2, Planning the NIS+ Namespace.

Remember, these servers are required in addition to the NIS servers. Although the NIS servers might be decommissioned or recycled after the transition is complete, the NIS+ servers will continue to be used.