multiple DHCP server on a network?
 

Hi

I have a Linksys router configured with DHCP supplying IPs to whole network. I have one Server with CentOS6.3 configured as Host machine. i want to configure a PXE server on Host machine so that i can install all the guest OSes using PXE.

how can we configure two DHCP on a network?
can anyone tell me step by step with explaination?

thanks

I've never heard of multiple DHCP servers on a network, can't imagine how it would work based upon the way DHCP broadcast requests get sent out.

Read over http://www.tech-juice.org/2011/06/21...pv4-explained/ to get an explanation.


However, this does not mean you can't setup PXE booting. I have set up PXE boots before and always had a separate DHCP service on another server.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PXEInstallServer < Ubuntu, I recommend it over CentOS for PXE booting, and I'm a huge RedHat guy.
http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/PXE/PXE_Setup < CentOS

It's a recipe for disaster, putting two DHCP servers on the same Layer 2 segment.

What I would do is create a second network (VLAN, separate NIC and switch, etc) for the PXE boot environment. Otherwise, you're just setting yourself up to have weird issues.

Alternatively, you could have the Linux server serve all DHCP requests, disable the DHCP server on the Linksys router, and put the router's IP as the default gateway for the network. It's perfectly acceptable to divorce DHCP from router functions. We do it in every one of our networks, and we have a few hundred of them (serving 11M users).

The only way I see this working is if you know the mac addresses for all the hosts in the network and using the servers to answer to specific hosts only... But, I don't understand why two dhcp servers...

Yes, this will work, assuming that one host has network blocks advertised and is configured to be authoritative for the broadcast domain; however, this is complicated and needlessly complex when the same goal can be attained by using dhcpd on Linux and disabling the router's DHCP server.

You can get this to work but consider gpxe instead. One could set lease limits to one less than amount of clients and then use any new dhcp just while booting. Other odd ways are to set mac to forever or set other port blocking.