Hi, I am a solaris administrator who is currently working in a solaris 2.6,7,8,9 environment. We are using NIS for centralised account authentication, groups, host name resolution and most importantly automounting. NIS , over the last few months has been rearing its notorious ugly head, and to be quite frank, i want to ditch it in favour of an all singing all dancing ldap server. But as much as i browse the web for solutions i am still left with some burning questions

1) Can I replace all NIS functionality (including automount) with an ldap solution, If so what would be better, openLdap or iPlanet. I would obviously lean toward a sun boxed soltion for our Sun network, but ease of setup, help/resources on the web and cost will be the determining factor.

2) I have searched the SUn website, and can find no documentation on iPlanet as a replacement for NIS, Subsequently, I dont know if this is a chargeable solution or if its bundled with one of my many solaris licenses. I also understand iPlanet is effectively a suite of stuff, but Which bit is the ldap server that I can replace NIS with ??.

3)what extra functionality can ldap provide over NIS, i have been told about the samba account integration, but is there anything else that would help me run my network with more ease.

4) Is ldap (whatever flavour) a secure and stable alternative to NIS


any help on these points would be greatly appreciated