Failover balancing continuously

[Michael Robbert]

We have a DHCP failover setup that is not balancing properly, but the 
real problem is that occasionally(almost daily, but not consistently) it 
is trying to balance several hundred times per second. Right now I have 
one of the servers shut down so that this is no peer to balance with and 
that keeps it at bay. I saw previous list messages where this same 
situation was happening and eventually the user was told to submit a bug 
report, but I haven't seen a fix for it. Should I also file this as a 
bug and if so how soon can I expect a response? Or should I drop 
failover completely since it didn't appear to be balancing properly 
anyways? We have enough IP space in most places to double the size of 
the subnet and just set up two independent servers each with half of the 
pool, but that just seems like a waste.
We are running 3.1.0 on both servers and here is our failover config.

Master:
failover peer "primary-secondary" {
        primary;
        address x.x.1.2;
        port 520;
        peer address x.x.1.3;
        peer port 520;
        max-response-delay 30;
        max-unacked-updates 10;
        load balance max seconds 3;
        mclt 1800;
        split 128;
}

include "/home/dhcpd/dhcpd.conf.static";


Secondary:
failover peer "primary-secondary" {
        secondary;
        address x.x.1.3;
        port 520;
        peer address x.x.1.2;
        peer port 520;
        max-response-delay 30;
        max-unacked-updates 10;
        load balance max seconds 3;
}

include "/home/dhcpd/dhcpd.conf.static";

I have tried to add lines for max-lease-misbalance, max-lease-ownership, 
min-balance, and max-balance, but that is when it started having the 
problem right in front of me.


Below is a sample of the logs. These messages repeat several times per 
second until the disk fills up.
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balancing pool 818d9f0 x.x.2/24  total 
241  free 126  backup 66  lts -30  max-own (+/-)19
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balanced pool 818d9f0 x.x.2/24  total 
241  free 126  backup 66  lts -30  max-misbal 29
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balancing pool 81779e8 x.x.160/23  
total 472  free 219  backup 68  lts -75  max-own (+/-)29
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balanced pool 81779e8 x.x.160/23  total 
472  free 219  backup 68  lts -75  max-misbal 43
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balancing pool 816bfe8 x.x.155/24  
total 245  free 142  backup 70  lts -36  max-own (+/-)21
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balanced pool 816bfe8 x.x.155/24  total 
245  free 142  backup 70  lts -36  max-misbal 32
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balancing pool 8166448 x.x.156/22  
total 978  free 376  backup 499  lts 61  max-own (+/-)88
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balanced pool 8166448 x.x.156/22  total 
978  free 376  backup 499  lts 61  max-misbal 131
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balancing pool 816a708 x.x.156/22  
total 30  free 12  backup 14  lts 1  max-own (+/-)3
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balanced pool 816a708 x.x.156/22  total 
30  free 12  backup 14  lts 1  max-misbal 4
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balancing pool 8150210 x.x.150/23  
total 450  free 186  backup 0  lts -93  max-own (+/-)19
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balanced pool 8150210 x.x.150/23  total 
450  free 186  backup 0  lts -93  max-misbal 28
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balancing pool 8164b68 x.x.150/23  
total 30  free 27  backup 0  lts -13  max-own (+/-)3
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balanced pool 8164b68 x.x.150/23  total 
30  free 27  backup 0  lts -13  max-misbal 4
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balancing pool 8121eb0 x.x.140/22  
total 964  free 426  backup 90  lts -168  max-own (+/-)52
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balanced pool 8121eb0 x.x.140/22  total 
964  free 426  backup 90  lts -168  max-misbal 77
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balancing pool 814e140 x.x.140/22  
total 30  free 27  backup 1  lts -13  max-own (+/-)3
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balanced pool 814e140 x.x.140/22  total 
30  free 27  backup 1  lts -13  max-misbal 4
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balancing pool 80f5fd0 x.x.0/18  total 
482  free 212  backup 36  lts -88  max-own (+/-)25
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balanced pool 80f5fd0 x.x.0/18  total 
482  free 212  backup 36  lts -88  max-misbal 37
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balancing pool 810c4a0 x.x.0/18  total 
462  free 265  backup 177  lts -44  max-own (+/-)44
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: balanced pool 810c4a0 x.x.0/18  total 
462  free 265  backup 177  lts -44  max-misbal 66
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: peer primary-secondary: Got POOLREQ, 
answering negatively!  Peer may be out of leases or database inconsistent.
Feb 27 15:21:27 secondary dhcpd: pool response: 0 leases

So, any ideas?

Thanks,
Mike Robbert