DHCP Pool from Switch VS Particular DHCP Server

[eeebbunee]

Hello Engineers!

I would like to gather your opinions about having DHCP server versus switch DHCP POOL configuration.

Currently our Cisco switch 3750X having some VLANs and each VLANs are providing IP addresses from the pool to clients.

Sometimes I can see the logs about 'IP conflict' error for some IP addresses, and I was wondering having DHCP server (windows/ virtual/ whatever) has more benefits or not.

Can you share your experiences or thoughts for me?

Much appreciated!

[ammahend]

For a smaller network Cisco switch is fine working as dhcp server, but if you have a large network where you prefer tight integration with DNS and high availability for dhcp, then a switch is not the way to go.

hope this helps

[marce1000]

 - I am against dhcp server and or services or switches and or routers because it can lead to race conditions when offering network service use a server or dedicated appliance.

 M.

[Georg Pauwen]

Hello,

it is obviously a matter of opinion, but I have seen literally thousands of IOS DHCP server implementations, and they all work(ed) fine. 

An external DHCP server is just another device to maintain, why would you if you don't really need it ?

As far as I recall, the Cisco IOS DHCP server sends a ping packet to the address that is to be assigned, and if there is a reply, it marks this as a conflict.
So the log messages you see are not really 'errors', but a way to avoid duplicate addresses being assigned to clients.

There used to be an option "ip dhcp conflict resolution", which basically scans the conflicting addresses and release them when there is no conflict anymore

The exec command "no ip dhcp conflict logging" should make sure that these activities are not being logged.

[pieterh]

you need to tell more details on the ip-address conflict message
there is a "bogus" error about address 0.0.0.0, but his is caused by IPDT
check if this post is relevant:
windows server (VM) complaing an address conflict for IP address 0.0.0.0 with the system from the Gi... - Cisco Community