We use static DHCP leases for our Linux servers on our small business network. Recently something bad happened to the DHCP server and all the linux servers ended up losing their IP addresses since they couldn't find a DHCP server on the network.
Fast forward a day later, the DHCP server was back up and running, but the servers didn't seem to be looking for the DHCP server anymore, so therefore they didn't have an IP address and weren't trying to get one. I ended up having to manually and physically goto each server and restart the network, at which point they would immediately get their IP address back.
Is there anything I can do on the servers to prevent this problem in the future? I'm sure after the DHCP server went down, the servers maybe tried to get an IP address renewed for a while, but eventually they apparently just stopped trying.
Obviously a solution is to have a backup DHCP server, but let's just pretend that isn't an option. Is there some way to force servers to keep trying to renew their IP indefinitely?
The servers are a mix of CentOS and Fedora.