Multipe DC's w/DHCP

[Hank Arnold]

One thing that would present a problem for me if my primary DC (W2K DC
w/FSMOs) went off line is DHCP. I'd like to set up my second DC so that it
can fill that role (it already has DNS) with a minimum of setup and delay.

Am I correct in assuming that I can't have two DHCP servers active at one
time? What I was thinking of was installing DHCP on the second DC, setting
it up identically to the current one and then de-activating it, leaving the
first DC as the only "Active" DHCP server?

Or is there a better way to set it up??

 

[Paul Bergson]

Two servers is recommended with an 80/20 split. The following two links
will give full details. But basically if you have both online if you lose
one the other will continue to provide addresses while you can work on
getting the other back up and running.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../proddocs/en-us/sag_dhcp_imp_configscopes.asp

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...proddocs/en-us/sag_DHCP_imp_BestPractices.asp

 

[Herb Martin]

One thing that would present a problem for me if my primary DC (W2K DC
w/FSMOs) went off line is DHCP. I'd like to set up my second DC so that it
can fill that role (it already has DNS) with a minimum of setup and delay.

Am I correct in assuming that I can't have two DHCP servers active at one
time? What I was thinking of was installing DHCP on the second DC, setting
it up identically to the current one and then de-activating it, leaving the
first DC as the only "Active" DHCP server?

Or is there a better way to set it up??

If you have enough addresses, the best method is to put
up the two DHCP servers with OVERLAPPING scopes
(same addresses) and then exclude a portion of the
addresses from each so that they will never distribute
the same IP.

The reason for the overlapping range is to prevent them
interfering with addresses distributed by the other
DHCP server (spurious NAKs.)

The only true fault tolerance for DHCP is using a
fail over Cluster configuration, but this is really only
needed when you have a limited pool of addresses (and
thus cannot afford to just make the scopes contain more
addresses.)

 

[Michael D. Ober]

Don't forget to make sure any reservations are identical on both servers.

Mike Ober.

 

[Hank Arnold]

Paul, Herb and Michael,

Thanks for the input. This will work great......