Networking —

Using Windows and Linux Servers

In today's environments, Linux and Windows servers are commonly used together, and therefore, the servers themselves must be capable of communicating. That said, most of that communication is likely to take place with industry standard protocols such as FTP and HTTP, so no additional client software is necessary to communicate between servers under these conditions.

Microsoft provides some degree of integration for UNIX systems via a special add-on pack called Windows Services for UNIX. This add-on pack provides compatibility with the UNIX NFS and a variety of UNIX utilities. The add-on pack can also be used on Linux servers. However, Microsoft states clearly that Windows Services for UNIX has only been tested on a limited number of versions of UNIX and only one version of LinuxRed Hat 8.

Using NetWare and Linux Servers

NetWare and Linux servers are fully interoperable and are often found together in network environments. For instance, a NetWare file and print server might coexist with a Linux firewall and proxy server. In addition, it is possible, by using eDirectory, to integrate the management of Linux servers into the directory services system in order to streamline administration.

To make these scenarios possible, Linux supports both IPX/SPX, which is required for NetWare 3.x and 4.x, and TCP/IP, which is used in the later NetWare versions. However, many of the Linux distributions do not natively support IPX/SPX. If you use one of those distributions, you need to download extra software and perform additional configuration.