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I am trying to use cobbler for automated cent OS deployment. we have a multi vlan ( about 5 vlans) network environment. We do not have remote consoles to most of these servers so we cant see pre install server status or PXE boot status how should be dhcp bootp services utilized ? should we need to have a dhcp server on each vlan/subnet ?
Any pointers about how should i go ahead deploying cobbler?

030
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vidyarthi
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3 Answers3

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I'm doing this on our network. If your switch/router supports it, just relay the dhcp to the cobbler server with dhcp-agent or equivilent on the router.

That way you don't have to have mulitple nic's etc on the cobbler server and make your life all confusing.

Cobbler's default setup should do the rest once you have things up and running. Although you may have to setup a stub zone for the network for dhcp only clients if you haven't pre-populated the mac addresses of your machines.

user75200
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You need to have at least one DHCP server listening in each vlan, remember that vlans are logically separated and DHCP won't cross over magically, the easiest way to do this if it's temporary is to have one linux box with a switching trunk to all those 5 networks with 5 subinterfaces configured and one DHCP running them all, although the dhcp config will be a bit complicated it'll get all the work done.

030
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lynxman
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  • thanks thats the approach i was considering second will be having new machines on same vlan as of cobbler server and then moving them in another vlan after setup + little puppet magic – vidyarthi Feb 07 '11 at 14:40
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    sorry that's not true at all. you can use the 'ip helper-address' feature on the gateway router for each subnet to forward DHCP requests to a single interface on your central dhcp server. If you don't have control of your routers, you still don't need an interface on every VLAN, you can just use the 'dhcrelay' program running on a given system. – eric sorenson Mar 21 '11 at 07:13
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    Sure Eric, but that not only complicates things but in my own experience is quite flaky – lynxman Mar 21 '11 at 10:00
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You may want to use a DHCP agent on each VLAN which will forward the traffic to the DHCP server... See the below link on how to configure this on a Cisco switch/router;

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_4t/ip_addr/configuration/guide/htdhcpre.html

Thomas Bibb
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