First, let us analyze what file sharing in a centralized storage area on a server means. It means that basically when you store a file it will be stored in a predetermined place on a server instead of on the system. Now let us analyze what file replication is. File replication would be the server backing up by replicating to another server. Both of these are extremely helpful services provided by servers. How are these beneficial services increasing the ease of administration? Well, all of the different users will be storing their work to the server. That means they can login and access their files from any workstation on the local network. So I have come up with some examples showing different scenarios where this would be helpful. Example 1: As a student, if all of your files were being stored on a server you could login from any computer and access your files allowing for great mobility. Example 2: This one isn’t about a local network but I felt it was a great example anyway. When your access your e-mails they are stored on a server. Allowing you to login from anywhere and access the mail. Also, you can send yourself attachments so that you can access them at any time from any place. Example 3: Say you work in a lab and you want to do an experiment. You could search the server to find helpful information from other people’s work that is being shared. All of these examples benefit from replication as well. These servers replicating which would be backing up to the other servers would help make sure that your work would not be lost. Even if the server that your files were stored on went down you could easily access them anyway on the servers that were up. Basically, network file system is what I have described above regarding the ability to access files by using a different computer or device that is connected to the network. Here are the five major reasons that I think NFS is used. * Mobility – Being able to access your information/files on any computer or device that can access the network. * Reliability – The fact that the servers will be replicated allows ease of mind knowing that your information/file will be backed up. * Ease of set up – From my experience with servers; it really isn’t very hard to set up NFS. * Ease of use – All you do to access your information/files as the end user is login. * Versatility – Honestly, so many things use this. A few examples are e-mail, video game networks, and you’ll probably see it in any job you could take.
How does Linux make file sharing safe and reliable? Well, in my opinion Linux has pretty good security. It is a good system in general. It would easily do great with NFS. Also if I am not mistaken, windows is always the biggest target.