Specifying NIS servers to bind to your storage system

You can specify an ordered list of NIS servers to which you want your storage system to bind. The list should begin with the closest NIS server (closest in network terms) and end with the furthest one.

Step

Enter the following command to specify the NIS servers and their order options nis.servers ip_address, server_name,[*]
The asterisk (*) specifies that broadcast (for IPv4) and multicast (for IPv6) is used to bind to NIS servers if the servers in the list are not responding. The '*' is the default value. If you do not specify the broadcast or multicast option, and none of the listed servers is responding, NIS services are disrupted until one of the preferred servers responds.

Example of specifying NIS servers to bind to your storage system

The following command lists two servers and uses the default broadcast option: options nis.servers 172.15.16.1,nisserver-1,*

Your storage system first tries to bind to 172.15.16.1. If the binding fails, the storage system tries to bind to nisserver-1. If this binding also fails, the storage system binds to any server that responds to the broadcast/multicast. However, the storage system continues to poll the preferred servers. When one of the preferred server is found, the storage system binds to the preferred server.

The following command lists an NIS server with IPv6 address and uses the default multicast option: options nis.servers 2001:0db8:85a3:0:0:8a2e:0370:99,*

Things to consider when binding NIS servers to storage systems
Keep the following in mind before performing the binding procedure:

Parent topic: How to configure NIS with Data ONTAP interfaces