Before you begin the transition, you should review the following basic principles:
You can defer the upgrade to NIS+ until after your site has completed its transition to the Solaris 2.x release. This would allow you to focus your resources on one transition effort at a time. You can continue to run NIS under the Solaris 2.x release until you are ready to make the transition to NIS+.
You can take several steps to simplify the transition. While these steps will diminish the effectiveness of NIS+, they will consume fewer servers and less administrative time. After the transition is complete, you can change the NIS+ setup to better suit your needs. Here are some suggestions:
Don't change domain names.
Don't use any hierarchies; keep a flat NIS+ namespace.
Don't establish credentials for clients, if you are running the Solaris 2.5 Release or later.
Decide which version of the Solaris 2.x software and NIS+ you will use for the transition. Because there are slight differences between versions, using multiple versions could needlessly complicate the transition process. Choose one version of the Solaris product and use its corresponding version of NIS+.
The current release has the most features (such as setup scripts). Make sure you compile a list of the Solaris release 2.6 patches that are required for normal operation, and make sure that all servers and clients have the same patches loaded.
Consider the two major user-related factors: First, users should not notice any change in service. Second, the transition phase itself should cause minimal disruption to client users. To ensure the second consideration, be sure the administrators responsible for each domain migrate their client machines to NIS+, rather than ask the users to implement the migration. This ensures that proper procedures are implemented, that procedures are consistent across client machines, and that irregularities can be dealt with immediately by the administrator.
Don't change the name services currently provided by NIS or change the way NIS functions.
Don't change the IP network topology.
Don't upgrade applications that use NIS to NIS+; leave the migration to NIS+ APIs for the future.
Don't consider additional uses for NIS+ during the implementation phase; add them later.