Lease Considerations - Novell NETWARE 6-DOCUMENTATION Manual

Lease Considerations

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Novell DNS/DHCP Management Utility Administration Guide
considerations, but three might be too costly in terms of eDirectory
performance.
Many factors must be considered when you decide how long to set your client
leases. Issues you must consider include the following:
Your site's and clients' usage patterns
Your network's goals
Availability of servers
Availability of network (IP) addresses
Another important consideration is that clients attempt to renew their leases
half-way through the lease duration. The longer the lease, the longer it takes
for client configuration changes to be registered with the DHCP server. It also
takes longer for the server to realize that a previously assigned address is no
longer in use.
Another issue to consider concerns outages and access to the DHCP server. If
a client loses access to its DHCP server before renewing its lease, it must stop
using the network after the lease expires. If a client is turned on and connected
to the network at the time of the outage, however, the lease does not expire.
The longest lease provided by a DHCP server determines the length of time
you might have to wait before configuration changes can be propagated within
a network. This length of time could mean manually restarting every client or
waiting the amount of time required for all leases to be renewed before the
changes take effect. If your site policy is to turn workstation power off at the
end of the day, clients could acquire configuration changes at least once per
day.
NOTE:
All lease considerations refer to DHCP clients or devices only. For clients
or devices that use BOOTP, you must bring down the device and restart it to
acquire any new configuration changes.
For more information, refer to:
"Considering the Length of Leases" on page 65
"Controlling Client Access to Leases" on page 67