Jen Kea DHCP Management Console vs Open DHCP Server

Jen Kea DHCP Management Console is a free, GPL v3 web interface for managing ISC Kea DHCP Server. Operators can manage leases, reservations, subnets, and infrastructure from a browser, while the dashboard shows subnet utilization, lease activity, server status, HA state, and alerts. Lease tools include filtering active leases, releasing them, cleaning stale leases, converting dynamic leases to reservations, and CSV import or export. Subnet and pool edits are applied over SSH after Kea validation, a host-side backup, multi-server preflight, and rollback protection. Optional IPv6 support covers leases, devices, reservations, subnet pools, timers, and metrics. Alert channels include Pushover, Telegram, Slack, ntfy, Discord, email, and generic webhooks; optional plugins add network discovery, IPAM Lite, local DNS synchronization, and other functions. Jen connects through the Control Agent or direct daemon sockets, uses MySQL or MariaDB for Kea data, and uses SSH for configuration and service operations. The recommended guided installer runs on Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04, and Docker deployment is also supported. The project targets homelab-to-small-business operators managing a handful of servers, not large fleets.

Open DHCP Server is free, open-source software that provides Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol service on Linux and self-hosted, on-premises deployments. It assigns addresses through static hosts and dynamic DHCP ranges, supporting up to 125 ranges on one server. Multiple zones can run on a single server, with BOOTP and relay-agent support. DHCP options may be set globally, for a range, or for an individual client, using string, IP, hexadecimal-string, or byte-array values without defining option types. Ranges can be filtered by MAC ranges, vendor options, and user options. Replicated fail-safe operation supports continuity, while lease status appears on an auto-refreshing HTML page. The project describes low CPU use, small executable size, and very low memory requirements. It is released under the GNU General Public License, with a GPL-2.0 repository license. The project says it suits experts and small or home deployments, including people without DHCP protocol knowledge.