I think the text should be clarified a bit:

A DHCP environment is fine for clients, however... keep in mind two things.  DHCP for your switches is not really a good idea.  If the switch has to pull its IP address (used for management) from a DHCP server, and a problem occurs with the DHCP server, you won't be able to manage the switch - this would cause problems for Network Manager, as a lot of features could be severely impacted by a problem on a DHCP server, or if the switch IP address changes, for whatever reason (two features that would most be impacted would be the cut-thru feature and the ability to push firmware updates or backup configuration files).  IP addresses are not updated if they change UNLESS you go through the discovery process again - so SNMP can give the Network Manager updated information on the switch.

The other reason I probably wouldn't recommend DHCP is that Network Manager is a Client/Server application.  IF both are installed on the same system, it's not much of a problem.  However, you can have up to three client installs attach to the Network Manager server remotely.  This gives you a bit more mobility, but as with most server-side applications, you could run into problems if the IP address changes suddenly.

Mind you, there are many ways to 'guarantee' a particular system, switch, etc. gets an IP address from DHCP every time a lease is called, but even those can be prone to failure, and thus why it's not recommended.

I think, more than anything else, the documentation's use of the term 'environment' is a bit vague.  I hope this explanation helps clarify things for you.

Thats a good question, I hope the answer is "Yes, it will work in a DHCP enviroment". I too am trying to run this in a DHCP enviroment without much luck.

-Mike

that is what i was hoping you would say. 

all our switches have been given static addresses.  the server/client will have static, as well. 

the way the Note was worded made me worry that maybe the discovery would effect my DHCP server.  

thanx for your help.

The wording of this requirement will be changed.  Essentially, machines running ONM should have IP adresses which do not change.  It doesn't matter how this is achieved.  The "unwanted side-effects" phrase simply refers to the affects of changing the IP address of the machine running ONM, which may be summarized as, "Server won't start."  Delete the entire {INSTALL_DIR}\oware\temp directory after stopping all server / client processes on the box, and you're fine.  I'll have to check to see if this has been fixed already, but there's no reason I can think of not to use static IPs for these machines anyway.