Why do we need Services for UNIX?

Why do we need Services for Unix?

It isn't that nature abhors only vacuum, it also dislike singles ;). In this jet age there isn't any perfect way of doing something. As there are so many things uneven in our life, so is in our network. We always look for easier and faster solutions for our problems and that's the reason we have mixed solutions in our computer world. Who so ever dominates our datacenter but we can't rule out the possibility of existence of non MS products. 

We have seen many environments where both MS and non MS products co-exist. For whatever reason it is there, people expect that our products should talk with our counterparts. This arise a need of something which will make both MS engineers and other party engineer happier and this gave birth to "Services for Unix". 

There are only 3 major releases of Services for Unix i.e. Services for Unix 1.0, Services for Unix 2.0 and Services for Unix 3.0. However Services for Unix 3.5 gain the most popularity. SFU develops to a great extent in these releases. Computer world has seen the evolution of many terminologies and one of them is interoperability. This word has gained so much importance that we have even incorporated the components of Services for Unix into the operating system. With the release of Windows 2003 R2 and later operating systems you don't need to download any package, all you need is to go to Control Panel à Add / Remove Windows components and select the components you need. Though Services of Unix is about to reach its end of life cycle but the inclusion of its components in the Operating System increases its life to a great extent. As you have guessed, nothing remains forever so is the name "Services for Unix". From Windows 2003 R2 SFU components are called differently. We have "MS Services for NFS", "Identity Management of Unix" and "Subsystem for Unix-based Application".

For the so called geek who love black and white monitor, this product help them in various ways. One can share files between any flavors of Unix and Windows using NFS. With the help of SUA, one can run "most" of the Unix commands and with the help of NIS feature you can actually have one login credentials for both Unix and Windows box. Isn't that amazing? 

So keep visiting this blog to find simple answer for nail biting problems. Last but not the least, comments and queries are welcome and we will try to reply to them as and when time permits.