HMC as a DHCP server

You can use the HMC as a DHCP server.

If you want to configure the first network interface as a private network, you can select from a range of IP addresses for the DHCP server to assign to its clients. The selectable address ranges include segments from the standard nonroutable IP address ranges.

In addition to these standard ranges, a special range of IP addresses is reserved for IP addresses. This special range can be used to avoid conflicts in cases where the HMC-attached open networks are using one of the nonroutable address ranges. Based on the range selected, the HMC network interface on the private network will be automatically assigned the first IP address of that range, and the service processors will then be assigned addresses from the rest of the range.

The DHCP server in the HMC uses automatic allocation, which means that each unique service processor Ethernet interface will be reassigned exactly the same IP address each time it is started. Each Ethernet interface has a unique identifier based upon a built-in Media Access Control (MAC) address, which allows the DHCP server to reassign the same IP parameters. If you are using an HMC Version 7 or later, you can configure both eth0 and eth1 HMC ports to serve DHCP addresses.

Figure 1. Private network with one HMC as a DHCP server