DHCP Failover between two Cisco Catalyst 4500

[Vincenzo Santoro]

Hi,

I've two Cisco 4500 running as core switches for huge and complex network. The two 4500 are going to act as dhcp server for several subnets.

The easiest solution would be to split each DHCP pool  in two, and assign the first half of the pool to one of the core switch and  the second half of the pool to the second core switch. This would be a partial solution since if one of the two fails, the second core switch would not have enough dhcp leases available for all the devices connected for each subnet.

For such a reason, I'm wondering if it the 4500 switches support a stateful redundant DHCP servers, so that the two switches can synchronize their DHCP lease tables. If this feature is available, I could define the same pools for both the switches without the risk of having duplicate ip addresses within the network.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Kindest regards,

Vincenzo

[Dan-Ciprian Cicioiu]

A simple solution for the 4500, will be VSS. But as far as I know the VSS on 4500 will be on market next year.

Dan

[Vincenzo Santoro]

Unfortunately VSS is supported on the 6500 series and only for 4500-E with sup 7-E. In my case the 4500 are running with sup 6-E, so this feature isn't available.

Any other idea?

[Dan-Ciprian Cicioiu]

ASA failover will also help achieve this, but is not 4500

I do not think there is any statefull DHCP available.

Dan