I am in a situation where I do not have control over DHCP on a subnet. I have a Satellite server that I want to use to provision VMware guests. The Satellite is on a different subnet and VLAN.
Is there a way I can modify the guest's boot options so that PXE doesn't need DHCP? I just want to tell it what its IP configuration is, like "virtual DHCP", and TFTP location is in the guest configuration.
I have very little control over the vSphere environment either. I have just enough access to provision a guest. The subnet is shared with other guests that have their own DHCP requirements that supersede mine.
Best Answer
PXE (Booting from the net) always uses DHCP.
But you have alternatives for your problem: Even when you have no control over the DHCP server you can surely add a proxyDHCP server. In such environment when a PXE client boots it'll get offers from both; the regular DHCP server "and" the proxyDHCP server. From the first one it'll get the common net parameters (IP/Mask/etc) and from the second one it'll get the PXE specific stuff (TFTP server IP, and NBP filename). Using a proxyDHCP is not intrusive; it only answers to PXE clients DHCP requests. i.e. Serva is a PXE server that includes a proxyDHCP server. (I'm related to Serva development)