Greetings,

Yes, the OS interface has a proper MAC address and is able to get an
IP address from DHCP.

DHCP servers are not responsible for assigning MAC addresses to
servers, so I am not aware of any mechanism through which our DHCP
server could possibly be the cause of the management interface
thinking its MAC address is 00:00:00:00:00:00.

The typical sequence of events is that a server transmits a
DHCPDISCOVER request for an IP address to a DHCP server in a layer 2
broadcast frame. This Ethernet frame contains the server's MAC address
in its Ethernet 'source' field. The DHCP server uses the requesting
server's MAC address (which it ascertains from the 'source' field in
the DHCPDISCOVER frame) as an identifier when deciding what IP address
(if any) to assign to the requesting server.

Since 00:00:00:00:00:00 is not a valid MAC address, our DHCP server is
not going to be able to assign an IP to it.

Is there a way we can assign a valid MAC address to this management
controller, or is it going to need to be replaced?

Sincerely,
<Juffo>