Reliable, on-site DHCP solution for 10,000+ devices
Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake CSD needed to eliminate the overhead of managing Windows VMs, particularly for DHCP and DNS, as part of a broader move to a Chromebook-based environment.
DHCP must remain on-site—cloud-based options introduce latency, external dependencies, and failure risks. If an internet outage occurs, devices would be unable to obtain IPs, disrupting the entire network. Curtis Klopke, the district's IT Administrator, needed a dedicated, reliable DHCP solution to maintain local access at all times.
Curtis considered three alternatives before choosing DNSBOX:
- Switch/firewall-based DHCP couldn't handle high lease volumes and lacked granular control.
- Running DHCP on a Windows server with open-source tools required constant security updates, manual maintenance, and regular reboots.
- Enterprise DDI solutions included unnecessary features like full-scale IPAM, adding complexity and cost without delivering actual benefits for the district.
After evaluating his options, Curtis deployed two DNSBOX appliances in the network core as a failover pair, providing high-availability DHCP and Authoritative DNS across the district's five schools and two offices.
Curtis praised DNSBOX's clean interface and automated DHCP replication, which eliminates manual configuration errors. Failover pairs always remain synchronized, ensuring DHCP continuity without conflicting settings.
