File sharing on a local network is a very useful thing to implement, as it eases the effort required in administration and the availability of files on the network. If there is centralized file storage, all of the intended audience of the file can access files without having to copy the files to their own machine. It also eases the stress of the system administrator, as if any file will require any type change instead of having to change it on every system. The admin can change and manage the files on the centralized storage itself. Access rights to the files can also be easily managed on the centralized storage, so that only the intended users have access to the files. If any user needs to have a local copy of any file, they can replicate files by using any file replicator command or by means of an application like “winscp”.
In a nutshell, file sharing is useful as: It ensures availability of files to users without downloading them. There’s no need to have local copies on each and every machine on network. Access control can be implemented easily. And duplication of data is avoided on each host on network. File sharing is critical for businesses where data needs to be accessed across entire local networks. For example, in an e-library of any organization, users could access common files over the network instead of having them downloaded locally on each and every computer.
"Network File System is a distributed file system protocol originally developed by Sun Microsystems in 1984, allowing a user on a client computer to access files over a network much like local storage is accessed (NFS)." The directories and files from a server are shared with other hosts on the network. NFS protocol is built on a client-server model, so there is one server and one or more clients. These directories or files shared can be accessed by clients as if it was stored locally, by mounting them. Basically, one would need to setup the server by editing three files on...