A Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 Linux DHCP server automatically assigns IP addresses and other configuration information to clients upon request or when the clients are restarted. If for some reason the Novell OES 2 Linux DHCP server is not accessible, clients lose their ability to connect to the network because they cannot obtain an IP address.
You can help prevent this problem by configuring DHCP with Novell Cluster Services, which ensures that the IP address range required by users to connect to the network is highly available. This is possible because the DHCP server is automatically started, stopped, and restarted on different servers in the cluster by Novell Cluster Services.
Before you attempt to implement this solution, familiarize yourself with how Cluster Services works. For information, see the OES 2 SP3: Novell Cluster Services 1.8.8 Administration Guide for Linux.