Asterix Premium Member join:2002-09-18 Nazareth, PA 1 edit |
Asterix
Premium Member
2013-Jul-23 1:18 pm
[Servers] Rack mounted DNS/DHCP serverLooking to make my network a bit complex.. lol Actually I am trying to make it more stable. Currently have well over 30 IP devices in my network on 5 separate subnets.. LAN, VoIP, Video, HVAC, Servers All connected either thru CAT6 or thru the wireless AP to a Netgear 48 port managed Gigabit switch. My central point is a rack mounted pfSense system which serves as DHCP for the 5 subnets. I fiddle a lot with the pfSense.. well I like to experiment. If this box goes down.. my entire network goes down. I could assign them static IPs but not to a lot of them. I am looking for a good robust (energy saving if possible) rack mounted DHCP server that can service my all 5 subnets. It needs to be VLAN aware. Any recommendations on what I should get? I don't to go the route of installing a Microsoft Windows Server DHCP.. they suck.. lol. I need something hardware based which tends to be more stable. EDIT: On second thoughts an internal DNS server would be icing on cake. |
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shdesignsPowered By Infinite Improbabilty Drive Premium Member join:2000-12-01 Stone Mountain, GA |
Re: [Servers] Rack mounted DHCP serverI'd just go with another pfSense box. Something like a Soekris or Alix in a rackmount case.
My pfSense box has been running for a long time with no problems. I just make sure to backup the config so I can rebuild it quickly. |
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Asterix Premium Member join:2002-09-18 Nazareth, PA |
Asterix
Premium Member
2013-Jul-23 1:28 pm
I thought about that already. It's like adding an another firewall to the mix. |
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shdesignsPowered By Infinite Improbabilty Drive Premium Member join:2000-12-01 Stone Mountain, GA |
It would just act as a DHCP server so no big deal. pfSense is probably the smallest software footprint you would use.
I have not seen stand-alone DHCP servers. You might look at a level 3 switch, but that would get costly. |
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BinkVillains... knock off all that evil join:2006-05-14 Colorado |
to Asterix
Re: [Servers] Rack mounted DNS/DHCP serverIf you want DHCP to be highly available, I know ISC DHCP server can be configured to do this and I believe this is the dhcpd that pfSense uses. As for DNS, BIND is regularly used for primary and secondary DNS. |
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Asterix Premium Member join:2002-09-18 Nazareth, PA |
Asterix
Premium Member
2013-Jul-23 1:43 pm
Actually I have a Netgear GSM7248 Managed Switch which serves my entire network. It has a DHCP function. May look into it but not sure how well it will serve. |
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Asterix |
to Bink
said by Bink:If you want DHCP to be highly available, I know ISC DHCP server can be configured to do this and I believe this is the dhcpd that pfSense uses. As for DNS, BIND is regularly used for primary and secondary DNS. I have an extra mini-ITX machine that I can turn into a rack mounted system. What does ISC DHCP run on? |
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BinkVillains... knock off all that evil join:2006-05-14 Colorado |
Bink
Member
2013-Jul-23 1:58 pm
Most UNIX-like OSs. |
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Asterix Premium Member join:2002-09-18 Nazareth, PA |
Asterix
Premium Member
2013-Jul-23 2:00 pm
Darn.. never installed UNIX.. |
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BinkVillains... knock off all that evil join:2006-05-14 Colorado |
Bink
Member
2013-Jul-23 2:04 pm
If you run pfSense, you are, essentially, running FreeBSD (a UNIX-like OS). |
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Asterix Premium Member join:2002-09-18 Nazareth, PA |
Asterix
Premium Member
2013-Jul-23 2:05 pm
Yeah.. well pfSense helps a lot in configuration as its all GUI.
I know FreeBSD is not natively GUI based (I may be wrong) |
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to Asterix
Infoblox appliances do DNS / DHCP / TFTP / FTP? server in one appliance... The older IB-series devices were stable and reliable as heck in the 4 years I was working with them. They're on a newer platform now (trinsic?) that I haven't played with much though.
Regards |
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BinkVillains... knock off all that evil join:2006-05-14 Colorado |
to Asterix
Yea. There are GUI overlays, but someone else might be in a better position to recommend something with a friendly GUI that can be used for DHCP and DNS. As shdesigns mentioned, you could run another instance of pfSense and just not use its firewall functionality (pfSense is a highly-customized and stripped down version of FreeBSD that should be able to perform these other two functions acceptably)and, since you are already familiar with it, this might make sense. The other alternative is to use a UNIX-like OS with a GUI you have no familiarity with or go with bloated Windows for these simple tasks. |
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Asterix Premium Member join:2002-09-18 Nazareth, PA 1 edit |
to HELLFIRE
said by HELLFIRE:Infoblox appliances do DNS / DHCP / TFTP / FTP? server in one appliance... Looks like an excellent option. Though I am thinking about ISC DNS/DHCP for a completely free solution |
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Wily_One Premium Member join:2002-11-24 San Jose, CA |
Wily_One
Premium Member
2013-Jul-23 7:04 pm
ISC DNS and DHCP do not require a lot of resources, especially for such a small network. Any Linux box with 2-4GB of RAM would be more than enough. Try Ubuntu.
If you're doing this because you want to learn DNS/DHCP, forget the GUI. CLI all the way. |
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Asterix Premium Member join:2002-09-18 Nazareth, PA |
Asterix
Premium Member
2013-Jul-23 7:15 pm
I have configured BIND DNS on Windows back in 2002/03 and have the old files for reference. So configuring DNS should be a nostalgic process. Wouldn't Ubuntu be a lot resource intensive for just a DNS and DHCP service? Will I be able to serve DNS and DHCP for multiple subnets? Which UNIX (Linux, CentOS, Debian..etc) GUI version would be the least resource intensive and best way to get the 2 services up and running? |
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Wily_One Premium Member join:2002-11-24 San Jose, CA |
Wily_One
Premium Member
2013-Jul-23 7:50 pm
I meant run without a GUI. You don't need it. I suggested Ubuntu just because it's easy. There are as many opinions on the "best" distro as there are users.
The number of domains and subnets you can support is essentially unlimited. Now how you configure your setup will depend on how many physical NICs you have to work with, how you're going to route it, and so forth. |
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Asterix Premium Member join:2002-09-18 Nazareth, PA |
Asterix
Premium Member
2013-Jul-23 9:47 pm
pfSense has the dedicated subnet ports going to a managed switch from where the switch handles the internal routing thru VLANs. If I can configure a single NIC based DNS/DHCP to route data to all the tagged subnets then it would be optimum |
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BinkVillains... knock off all that evil join:2006-05-14 Colorado |
to Wily_One
said by Wily_One:ISC DNS and DHCP do not require a lot of resources, especially for such a small network. Any Linux box with 2-4GB of RAM would be more than enough.
If you're doing this because you want to learn DNS/DHCP, forget the GUI. CLI all the way. Hell, 256MB is way more than enough to run dhcpd and namedand all youd need is a command shell and text editor (go vi). |
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Bink |
to Wily_One
said by Wily_One:The number of domains and subnets you can support is essentially unlimited. Now how you configure your setup will depend on how many physical NICs you have to work with, how you're going to route it, and so forth. You could easily do it with one NIC and multiple VLAN interfaces. |
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Asterix Premium Member join:2002-09-18 Nazareth, PA |
Asterix
Premium Member
2013-Jul-24 11:06 am
Can you recommend any hardware that I can rack mount? 1U will be best. The lowest possible "all-in-one" hardware that I could use to save on power bills without sacrificing performance of named and DHCP. I think CentOS is worth having a look as there are some nice tutorials on how to configure BIND on CentOS |
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to Asterix
I'd start at distro watch for what *nix options are out there... too bad they don't have a specific search option for DNS / DHCP services.
Hardware-wise, Soekris specializes in kit for this. Don't have any specific Atom-based 1U rack servers I know of; a search on your searchengine of choice ought to come up with some stuff.
Regards |
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BinkVillains... knock off all that evil join:2006-05-14 Colorado |
to Asterix
dhcpd and named will use very little CPU on such a small network so you can easily go with a low-power processor. |
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Asterix Premium Member join:2002-09-18 Nazareth, PA |
to HELLFIRE
Yeah I thought about Soekris. But with no VGA its a pain to work with. May have to go for a custom built low powered Atom board.
My biggest concern is if CentOS itself would be too powerful for the Atom based system. I am looking for DNS/DHCP services and do not want the Atom processor to be busy working on processing other CentOS services or the OS most of the time. Something like how extremely low profile ESXi install is. The processor barely knows its there and can work on the hosts rather than maintaining the ESXi system
What is the smallest disk size I would need to hold CentOS with DNS and DHCP? |
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shdesignsPowered By Infinite Improbabilty Drive Premium Member join:2000-12-01 Stone Mountain, GA (Software) pfSense ARRIS SB6121
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Personally, I don't care if there is a VGA port. All my stuff runs headless. For linux, I find any kind of a desktop is too much a hassle to maintain. I do work remotely via ssh anyway.
Still, pfSense will have the same DHCP server and DNS cache most *nix systems use and will run on a 512meg CF card.
I currently run pfSense on an Alix board. There are rack mount cases available and some boards have a VGA port. Mine uses a 12V/1.2A power supply and probably uses 6 watts (has wireless card also for wireless bridge.) I also used a Soekris board as an access pointand it worked well (older). The Soekris boards are a bit pricy compared to the Alix.
I started with Red Hat then Gentoo Embedded and finally Gentoo for my router. I got tired of chasing package dependencies when updating and wasting time updating the system. pfSense allowed me to have someone else worry about that. |
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Asterix Premium Member join:2002-09-18 Nazareth, PA |
Asterix
Premium Member
2013-Jul-24 2:02 pm
Thinking of getting this .. » www.pcengines.ch/alix2d13.htmRun CentOS on this and install DNS/DHCP. Wonder how do I rack mount this? |
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1 recommendation |
to Asterix
even with a dedicated dhcp server on the rack, you still have 1 single point of failure...the DHCP server.
how long is the lease time on your current DHCP rules?
if you backup the pfsense config, you can rebuild and upload the config file within 30 minutes. of course if you have a hardware issue that is another story.
you could always have another computer sitting on the shelf with pfsense ready to go in case of failure. it would be a manual process, you wouldnt be able to take advantage of CARP (static WAN from ISP with multipls IPs, do you currently have that configuration or is this a home setup? sounds like alot for a home setup, but some people have it). |
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Fraoch join:2003-08-01 Cambridge, ON SmartRG SR808ac TP-Link EAP225 Grandstream HT502
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to Asterix
said by Asterix:Wouldn't Ubuntu be a lot resource intensive for just a DNS and DHCP service? Will I be able to serve DNS and DHCP for multiple subnets?
Which UNIX (Linux, CentOS, Debian..etc) GUI version would be the least resource intensive and best way to get the 2 services up and running? There's Ubuntu Server which should be leaner - no GUI though. However it would be massive overkill for just DNS and DHCP. You may want to try Debian instead. There's something else you may want to consider - a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite. The new hardware version can be rack-mounted I believe and if it's just doing DNS and DHCP it will fly. Silent, power-efficient (it comes with a 12 W power brick) and $99... It comes with a nice GUI although all configuration is available by CLI of course. For DNS and DHCP you wouldn't even have to use the CLI, it can all be done via the GUI. It runs Debian (Vyatta). You can specify DHCP servers on multiple subnets and it is VLAN-capable as well. It's supplied in a "blank slate" which is actually advantageous in your case - no routing functions to configure or deactivate. All you do is define DHCP servers and assign them to a subnet. |
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Asterix Premium Member join:2002-09-18 Nazareth, PA 2 edits |
Asterix
Premium Member
2013-Jul-24 6:44 pm
Looking into Ubiquiti right now. DHCP function looks good..
Concerned on DNS.. it says dynamic DNS and forwarding only. Was looking for a DNS that can be managed for caching as well for my local domain. |
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Fraoch join:2003-08-01 Cambridge, ON SmartRG SR808ac TP-Link EAP225 Grandstream HT502
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Fraoch
Member
2013-Jul-25 9:36 am
said by Asterix:Concerned on DNS.. it says dynamic DNS and forwarding only. Was looking for a DNS that can be managed for caching as well for my local domain. Those are the built-in functions in Vyatta. But since the underlying system is Debian, you could install a DNS caching server like Bind9. There are a few examples in the Ubiquiti forum about this. By the way, you'd have to do the same thing with any Linux like CentOS - some distros may have Bind9 already included though. |
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