Cisco SF300 as DHCP server

[azi123]

Hi, everyone!

Is it reasonable to use SF-300 switch as DHCP server in each subnet of an enterprise network? ( A ten-floor building and each floor is assigned to one subnet)

I'm actually a little concerned about this device whether it functions as DHCP server properly or not.

the link for the switch:

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/switches/sf300-24p-24-port-10-100-poe-managed-switch-gigabit-uplinks/model.html#~tab-downloads

Thanks,

Amir

[Georg Pauwen]

Hello,

the SF300 works perfectly well as DHCP server, however, it is meant for small businesses with a limited amount of users. For a ten story enterprise it seems you need something bigger. How many DHCP enabled users does the enterprise have ?

[azi123]

Approximately I can say we have 300 DHCP-enabled users on each floor.

I think one SF-300 as DHCP server for each floor meets our requirements,

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@Georg Pauwen wrote:

Hello,

the SF300 works perfectly well as DHCP server, however, it is meant for small businesses with a limited amount of users. For a ten story enterprise it seems you need something bigger. How many DHCP enabled users does the enterprise have ?

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ya?

[balaji.bandi]

As per your given information you looking to provide each floor one subnet, (how many users going to be each floor )

even you consider each floor 50 X  10 = you looking 500+ users, that will be good number of users.

Suggest to have dedicated DHCP Server, not to put load on these Small business devices.

[azi123]

Actually, I'm going to assign each floor to a VLAN and for each VLAN I will put one SF-300 switch as DHCP server.

Is this OK?

[balaji.bandi]

1 sub net per device seems to be reasonable approach i believe.

but you have administrative big task to manage them in management point of view.

[paul driver]

Hello

I would tend to agree with @balaji.bandi suggest you look at a dedicated physical/virtual server(s) to perform your dhcp allocation, Although the switch can perform dhcp, it doesn't necessary mean you should use it, with that amount of users I would recommend you also look at some sort of resiliency for dhcp and split the allocation over two servers.

Let the switch do what it designed to do and don't burden it with additional resource of being a dhcp server and also leave yourself open to completed failure if the switch breaks.

[azi123]

Thank you, Paul, for your valuable comment. It makes things more clear to me. 

Actually, my company has another building and in order to apply your suggestion, I can use a small business server which is located there. The distance between these two buildings is around 10 km and they are in the same LAN.

Can I use that server as DHCP server for our building? Does 10 km matter?

[balaji.bandi]

Distance not matter, but as long as you have resilience available(2 Fibre or other mode of connectivity between buildings)  to DHCP Server ( or other building).if not all DHCP Request fails.

If you able to implement below solution is best for the HA setup, by Deploying 2 DHCP servers each one in each building in case between building link fails, still user can able to get IP address and use local resource, 

we are not sure how your internet breakout in place. so i would image you consider the all point of failures.