[BBLISA] A question on DHCP "shoulds".

[John Hanks]

On Mon, Aug 31, 2009 at 10:11 AM, Rudie, Tony<Tony.Rudie at fmr.com> wrote:
> Interesting.
>
> How well does AIX play in a completely-DHCP world?  And what about clustering?  We use Veritas Cluster Server and Oracle RAC.  (the clustering is used on several OS platforms).  And how does 3DNS fit in?

If anyone could break a consistent, standards-based view of the world,
it'd be IBM and Oracle. The last time I ran AIX it was in a shop that
adhered to the 'all servers must use static IPs' mantra,  so I can
only say it worked on a couple of occasions when I used DHCP on test
LPARs, although I have some recollection that /etc/resolv.conf and
friends had to be handled manually. I left there just before Oracle
RAC entered the picture, but I did run many Oracle application servers
on which I used dhcp to configure IP information (despite the mantra),
and which had a Foundry Networks load balancer out in front which had
a static IP assigned for the service the whole setup provided.

Clustering of any kind certainly breaks the mold. It's difficult to
dynamically assign an IP address as a floating IP which may or may not
have an associated MAC address or float across many MAC addresses.
There's no doubt there are some things for which static IPs and local
/etc/* entries are required and in those cases, I'm willing to be a
leaf on the river. But IMO, those should be rare exceptions.

jbh