Choosing the Data Store

You can choose to store the DHCP data using files in a local directory or NIS+ tables in a NIS+ directory service. Because NIS+ is distributed, multiple servers can access the same database. NIS+ also provides inherently faster information retrieval. Note that the server machine must already be configured as a NIS+ client to use this option.

The files method can be used efficiently at sites having less than 10,000 DHCP clients, but it is somewhat slower than NIS+, and requires all DHCP data to be stored on one file system. The data stored in files can only be shared with multiple DHCP servers if it is exported through an NFS mount point.

Traditional NIS (as opposed to NIS+) is not offered as a data store option because it does not support fast incremental updates. If your network uses NIS, you should use files for your data store.