Selective forwarding with dhcrelay - PXE Master Server

Alex Burger alex_b at users.sourceforge.net
Mon Oct 13 17:32:52 UTC 2008


David W. Hankins wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 09:09:29AM -0400, Alex Burger wrote:
>> I have created a patch for dhcrelay to allow you to specify which server to 
>> forward to based on the MAC address of the requesting client.  This allows 
> 
> Doesn't it work (simpler) to just forward all DHCP packets to both
> servers and let them sort out which ones to answer?

It may be if the servers support the ability to only reply to certain 
requests.  I don't think there is any way to do this with RIS.  Altiris 
should support it but that doesn't help if RIS insists on replying to 
all requests.  It's for the scenarios where it's not possible to modify 
how the PXE servers respond.

In our environment we are going to have the following PXE services:

-HP Rapid Deployment server (based on Altiris)
-HP thin client management (based on Altiris)
-Microsoft RIS
-Xen Desktop Provisioning Server

If they all supported it, configuring each one to select which clients 
to respond to would be more work than using a PXE 'master server'.

Expanding on the patch to allow wildcards and maybe vendor class pattern 
matching would make it even easier to manage.

Alex


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