NFS is a great method of sharing files from a Linux or UNIX server to a Linux or UNIX server. As I mentioned earlier in the chapter, Windows systems can access NFS shares as well, but it comes with an additional licensing penalty. NFS is preferred in a Linux or UNIX environment though, since it fully supports Linux and UNIX style permissions. As you can see from our earlier dive into Samba, we essentially forced all shares to be treated as being accessed by a particular user, which was messy, but was the easiest example of setting up a Samba server. Samba can certainly support per-user access restrictions and benefit greatly from a centralized directory server, though that would basically be a book of its own! NFS is a bit more involved to set up, but in the long run, I think it's easier and integrates better.
Earlier, we set up a parent directory on our filesystem to house our Samba shares, and we should do the same thing with NFS. While it wasn't mandatory to have...