KEA DHCP Server - using variables/client attributes in option data

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Hoping someone here as in depth experience with Kea configs that can help me.

I need to ZTP a LOT of hardware and ideally pulling the configuration file specific for the device. This is for Aruba CX switches, unfortunately they do not include a SN or system mac in the vendor specific data for the DHCP request, so I was thinking the easiest way would be to map the mac address printed on the box to the specific device and allocate the config file based on that.

As in use my config generation script to name the files as the mac address, then in the Kea config have it return the switches mac address as the Option43:145 data.

so my question is, is it valid to have my kea options-data config like:

{ "name": "aruba-config-file-name", "space": "vendor-encapsulated-options-space", "data": "option[55]" },

and then in theory if the device has mac ab:cd:ef:01:23:45 it would get a response with option 43 sub option 145 data: ab:cd:ef:01:23:45 ?

if not feasible, would be keen to hear ideas on how people have/would manage this?

I had thought about making them all pull a base config with a "copy http://<config server> running" command and putting some server side logic there but not sure how to best make that work tbh.

Posted Feb 15, 2026, 11:01 PM UTC

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