This permits a system administrator to set up NIS client systems with only minimal configuration data and add, remove or modify configuration data from a single location.
Servers act as a central repository for host configuration information.
Master servers hold the authoritatve copy of this information, while slave servers mirror this information for redundancy. Clients rely on the servers to provide this information to them. Information in many files can be shared in this manner. Whenever a process on a client needs information that would normally be found in these files locally, it makes a query to the server it is bound to, to get this information. Planning If you are setting up a NIS scheme for the first time, it is a good idea to think through how you want to go about it.