Bootprelay configuration

[laurie]

Hi

We have a D series Extreme switch and would like to enable bootprelay so clients can receive their addresses from the companies DHCP server.

I see the commands are (assuming just the default vlan is configured)

"configure bootrelay add "

"enable bootprelay vlan"

However the document also says the VLAN must have an ip address and IP forwarding must be enabled which is where I am confused.

This device will not be routing, just acting as a simple switch. Do I need to configure IP addresses and IP forwarding to make Bootprelay work when the device is not being used as a router?

Thanks

laurie

[laurie]

Hi Matthew

You're completely correct. This was mentioned earlier and I should have chased that down before continuing. Thanks for explaining the problem at a beginner level.

[Matthew_Hum]

The D2-series is a L2 switch only. in addition it runs EOS, not XOS, so those are not options for you. If you are insistent on running your own DHCP server there are some different options for you.

1. you could pass a tagged/trunked link to your server.
a. enable VLAN 802.1Q tagging to your interface
b. enable NIC teaming on the interface and create new interfaces on each tagged VLAN
c. enable additional scopes in your DHCP server

2. have an existing linux server on a trunk link and use dhcrelay to forward the DHCP requests to your windows DHCP server (or have linux handle the DHCP server with dhcpd)

3. get an additional L3 switch trunked with all your VLANs and enable bootprelay/ip-helpers on that.

[laurie]

Hi

Thanks for the replies. I now understand that bootprelay is an L3 function.

The default router for this network is an externally managed device so we were hoping to configure the Extreme device with the bootprelay function since we mange this device ourselves.

Would it be possible to do the following to achieve what we want?

1) Configure Extreme device with ip address 192.168.8.3 and give it a gateway address of the managed router (192.168.8.1)

2) Configure vlan "VLAN2" add ports 1 - 12 untagged


3) Configure vlan "VLAN2" ip-address 192.168.8.5 255.255.255.0

4) Enable ipforwarding "VLAN2"

5) Enable DHCP Relay

6) Enable bootprelay vlan VLAN2

7) Configure bootprelay add

 Setup new scope for 192.168.8.0

9) Configure dhcp parameters on MS dhcp server
003 Router set to 192.168.8.3 (ip address of extreme switch)

[Paul_Thornton]

Following on from what others have said - bootprelay (or any other form of 'dhcp helper' technology) is fundamentally an L3 function, and needs to run on the router of the network not a an L2-only switch.

Clearly if that switch has IP addresses, and is routing, then it is the right place for this to be applied - but it sounds like in your case you need to enable it on whatever device is the default router for your VLANs.