Kea is ISC’s new open source DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 server.

Kea runs on Linux, BSD, and MacOS.  Kea comes with comprehensive Developer and Administrator documentation.

ISC offers commercial 7 x 24 support for Kea, as well as consulting and contract development to assist in implementing Kea, including migration from ISC DHCP.

Kea is designed to be easily extensible through an applications API. This API can be called at multiple places during the DHCP processing, to consult or update enterprise provisioning systems, for example. Kea DHCP leases may be stored in a memory file database, or in a MySQL or Postgres database.

The Kea distribution does not yet include a DHCP client or relay, but because both are standards-based, the ISC DHCP client works fine with the Kea DHCP server.

Broad, standards-compliant support for both DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 protocols

• Direct address assignment or DHCPv6 prefix delegation
• Dynamic DNS for updating DNS records as leases are renewed or expired
• Dynamic IP addressing for most clients and static host reservations, for servers and printers
• Tracking of MAC addresses, even in DHCPv6
• Most DHCPv4 and v6 options, or easily add your own

Easily Extensible to Integrate with Your Other Systems

• Using Hooks, it is possible to control the assignment of options and even addresses from your own provisioning system
• Hook points include: packet received, subnet selected, lease renewed, lease released, ready to respond (different hook points for DHCPv4 and DHCPv6)
• Hooks allow the developer to edit information such as the lease parameters (time to renew), the subnet, address or options to be delivered
• The Kea distribution includes a sample hooks application that can retrieve per-user information from an external file (such as options)
• We are building a library of commercially-licensed hooks applications to help support Kea development. Our first is a Forensic Logging application, available with any Kea support contract
• We have a recorded presentation on writing a Hooks application, given by one of our software engineers.
• For an example of how this can be used, see the FaceBook Kea Application
• If this sounds like too much – ask us if we can do it for you!

Resources

Kea Project wiki

Kea Packages for popular operating systems

Kea User’s mailing list

Kea Administrator Reference

Kea Developer Guide

Kea Subscription Collateral

Kea Builds on Jenkins

Kea Open Source License Agreement

Weighing your options

You may be wondering whether we recommend you migrate from ISC DHCP to Kea at this time.

• Use Kea if you need higher performance
• Use Kea if you are modernizing your infrastructure
• Use Kea if you want a stateless DHCP architecture tied to your own provisioning system for device-specific information
• Use Kea for your DHCP server needs

If Kea is missing a minor feature you need

• Consider requesting a custom-developed hooks application
• Kea hooks can do everything from re-writing options in the packet to triggering external applications

Continue to use ISC DHCP if

• You need DHCPv4 failover (note that HA implementations of Kea are possible today using a HA database back end)
• If you are using legacy interfaces

Continue using ISC DHCP for client and relay functions

New to Kea? Check out these webinars.

Kea Webinar from our partners, Men and Mice. Men and Mice offer training classes for Kea.