DHCP Fault Tolerance

  • Thread starter Thread starter genghiz
  • Start date Start date
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genghiz

Hello friends:

We currently have one DHCP server in windows server 2003 AD environment. I
am planning on splitting the current scopes into two and set up a second
DHCP server for fault-tolerance. My question is how can I get the clients to
request IP address from both the DHCPs.

Thanks.
 
Hello genghiz,

You can not fix a DHCP server for the clients. If you split the scopes you
will see, that both will be used. First com, first serv is the princip in
DHCP.

We use it also that way and it works fine, both DHCP servers are used.

Best regards

Meinolf Weber
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The way DHCP works is that the client sends a broadcast message requesting
an address and the first server to respond gets to issue the address.
There's no way to force a client to use one, or the other, or both DHCP
servers.
 
Meinolf and richard, muchos gracias.

Richard G. Harper said:
The way DHCP works is that the client sends a broadcast message requesting
an address and the first server to respond gets to issue the address.
There's no way to force a client to use one, or the other, or both DHCP
servers.
Click to expand...
 
As Meinolf and Richard have stated, DHCP clients will simply use the DHCP
server that responds first to their requests. You can somewhat make this
process more deterministic by placing each DHCP server closer (in terms of
networking distance) to the clients that you intend to target, which
increases probability that its response will get to clients first (but does
not guarantee it). Keep in mind that you need to configure your routers to
allow DHCP communication to get through to other subnets...

hth
Marcin
 
Several years back at a different job, I configured DHCP on two clustered
servers. Both servers were configured with the same scopes and such but the
DHCP database was hosted on a shared SAN drive so that if one box failed, the
other box would start the DHCP service and continue right where the other one
left off.

If you're not looking for load balancing, but just failover in case one
server goes down, this solution worked well for me.

:
[snip]
planning on splitting the current scopes into two and set up a second
DHCP server for fault-tolerance.
Click to expand...
[snip]
 
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