Running DHCP Server on XenServer vs Dedicated Box
 

Hello everyone,

I wish to inquire on your virtualization expertise. I currently have a 4gb box running Citrix XenServer (free edition) and I am running 2 virtualization servers. One is running Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition acting as a DNS server, and the other is running Windows Server 2008 R2 as an Active Directory Server. I was planning on integrating a DHCP server into this setup (running linux), but I was wondering whether I should run the DHCP server on the Xen box, or install it on a dedicated box.

Note: This is a home setup, not a corporate environment. I wish to install it on the Xen box to conserve electricity, but I was wondering if it would cause too much traffic for the NIC to handle, and in that case it would need to be in a separate dedicated box on its own.

Thanks,
Graison

In a home environment there is no way you are maxing out your NICs. It's just not best practice to run other services on the hypervisor host OS. But why not run dhcp on the Windows DNS server, they integrate nicely, it is common to have them on the same server and neither dhcp or DNS use much in the way of resources unless in a huge environment.

I will give that a shot! Thank you for your input!

ALSO: I wasn't going to install the DHCP server on my host OS; I was going to create a new VM, install Linux on it, and then install the DHCP server on it.

Hello Graison,

I managed to dig this post but, anyway, were you successful in putting up a DHCP server on a XenServer? Curious.


Best regards