Hello all,

My question is how do I make multiple servers talk to each other and share resources?
Here's a little background I have spun up a Linux Web, Email and Mysql server all on separate boxes and are stable. Now MS servers have service broadcast announcing to the network what it does. Do Linux servers do the same. Is this the role of NIS?

Depends on what you want to do.

For sharing filesystems Unix/Linux uses NFS. Type "man nfs" or "man nfsd" for info. You basically define your shares in a file called /etc/exports. You can mount these like local filesystems at the command line or in /etc/fstab.

Also there is a tool for sharing filesystems to MS-Windows called "samba".

For printing you would want to look at "cups" (Common Unix Printing System).

NIS is used to centralize various tables (/etc/passwd, /etc/hosts, /etc/services....) so that you don't have to create the same user or host entry or port entry, etc... on multiple hosts - you just create them on a master host and configure it to share out. Unless you have dozens of users, hosts, ports etc... that need to be the same on most hosts I'd recommend not bothering with it. If all you need is hosts you're probably better making your sure your DNS is setup properly.

Are you looking for something like Howl?
http://www.porchdogsoft.com/products/howl/

Hey, thanks for the info. I'm not sure I asked the question correctly but you both have been a help.

Thanks

Which resources do you want to share between your servers? If you need access to drive space on another server, you can set up NFS or Samba shares. If you want to spread processor load to other servers (thread migration), you can set up OpenMosix.