Doing it that way is a sure way of loosing your mind at a certain scale.
Don’t do that.
Ensure your DHCP and DNS work as expected and save your headache for the future when you want to expand the homelab to something like https certification or IPv6.
Static IPs should be used sparingly. Like for servers.
Comment on Going nuts with networking of VMs on Proxmox (SOLVED)
Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Is there a reason you sre using dhcp instead of assigning ips manually?
Dhcp is great if you don’t care about stuff, in my experiece as soon as you start caring you should do it manually
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
I agree with you. I am not at a scale were it matters so I don’t bother. I only have a couple dozen servers to harness for work. Point is that OP does not sound to be at that scale either
Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
My scale is ±5 servers. And of them only the ones that are critical like my AD/DHCP/DNS or my backup servers are actually static.
I’d peobably get an aneurysm seeing your network ;), /j
But if it’s tidy and documented, more power to you :)Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Well my entire network doc is a 30ish lines .txt file that looks like this example:
- Hostname11 10.0.0.11 master db1
- Hostname12 10.0.0.12 db1 backup
- Hostname13 10.0.0.13 ui back end 1
- Hostname21 10.0.0.21 master db2
- Hostname22 10.0.0.22 db2 backup
- Hostname23 10.0.0.23 ui back end 2
Then some other general stuff on some other 10.0.1.x network etc
Once you take care assigning static blocks and it makes sense you don’t have any surprises. Db1 crashed? Lookup its config data, reinstall machine, recover from backup and nothing else needs to be configured.
trilobite@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
Well, because its all managed in one place rather than having to go and configure loads of machines
tiptoes@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Wrong. It’s 2026. You should be setting static dhcp entries and using dhcp to ensure static IPs, not avoiding dhcp. Using manually assigned static IPs just means you’ve built a fragile unique snowflake.
trilobite@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
Maybe I’m misunderstanding but what I mean is that I assign static IP via DHCP based on the MAC. I’m not setting static IPs at client level. i.e MAC address on VM1 is XX:XX:XX:XX so I set this MAC address in DHCP to correspond to IP 192.168.20:XX so that the machine gets a unique IP all the time. Is this what you meant?
Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Dhcp and ensuring it works is someting I don’t care about. I tell the kernel wich packets it should be interested in and how to sign itself and that will be it thank you very much.
I configure static routes and have all my machines and network segments neatly arranged in my database. I setup a new machine I know exactly what address it should have,it goes up and until it has a problem it will keep the address it was installed with.
Its 2026 I work like that, you can have your opinions I have mine. The difference is that I depend on one less thing that I don’t care about, so I have more profit margin.
tiptoes@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
Very old school; yes you can certainly do all of that and track all of that yourself. We all used to do it that way……But it’s 2026….just as you’d use a real editor rather than edlin, or password managers rather than text files, the new ways ARE better, easier and more consistent. Making sure dhcp works is one of the modern (honestly not that modern) basics that make sure your network is set up properly and isn’t hiding some misconfiguration gremlins that only work because of some static ip and route workaround you implemented years ago and worked “until now”.
Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
You can have some weird workaround creep up yesrs later also with dhcp and dns ,😉
warmaster@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I don’t know what I’m doing, please explain.
tiptoes@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
DHCP can be set to specifically assign the same IP to specific devices, reserving them and ensuring that no other systems will use the same IP accidentally. So your servers will consistently get that same IP address assigned to them every time, no worry about the ip address changing unexpectedly.
warmaster@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Oh ok, it’s what I did. I set the client’s IP as fixed on my router.
trilobite@lemmy.ml 6 days ago
Can I just check with @tiptoes@sh.itjust.works and @Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works that what I’m doing is what you are saying.
I’m not setting static IPs at client level. Would be a nightmare. What I do is assign IPs on the DHCP server i.e MAC address on VM1 is XX:XX:XX:XX so I set this MAC address in DHCP to correspond to IP 192.168.20:XX so that the machine gets a unique IP all the time. Is this what you meant? I thought everyone would be doing this nowadays as it so easy to manage, except when something goes wrong like in this case.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
You very much want dhcp
Inside your DHCP server you should set a static IP assignment.
Eggymatrix@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
That is just static ip with extra steps
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
It avoids all the issues with static IPs though
Manually setting static IPs leads to a incredibly confusing network setup and you are liable to end up with duplicate IPs