Windows Server 2012 DHCP includes a failover
scope feature. The benefit of this feature is that leases and
reservations are synchronized across the DHCP server and a failover
cluster is not required. The two different types of failover scopes are
a load-balance and hot-standby failover scope. To deploy a failover
scope, follow these steps.
1. Install the DHCP server service on at least two DHCP servers and authorize them both.
2. Log on to the
primary DHCP server and open the console. Expand the IPv4 node and
create the desired scope .
3. Once the scope is
created, right-click the scope in the tree pane and select Configure
Failover. The DHCP Configure Failover Wizard opens.
4.
On the Introduction page, leave the check box to apply failover to all
scopes or uncheck the box and select the desired scopes and click Next
to continue.
5. On the next page, type in the name of the partner server for failover and click Next to continue.
6. On the Create a New
Failover Relationship page, accept the default name for the failover
relationship and configure the desired failover configurations as shown
in Figure 1.
This example configures a 50/50 split-scope load-balanced
configuration. This example also uses message authentication, and we
enter a shared secret password that must be documented. Click Next to
continue.
Figure 1. Defining the failover relationship settings.
7. On the final page, confirm the configurations. If all the settings look correct, click Finish to create the failover scope.
8. A pop-up window
opens to detail the status of the configuration. When the configuration
completes successfully, click Close to finish the process.
This completes the failover scope configuration task
DHCP Failover Cluster Servers
You can deploy DHCP services on a Windows
Server 2012 failover cluster. With this type of DHCP deployment, there
is only a single DHCP server database, and configuration is not
replicated across servers. Instead, the DHCP data is accessed by one
server at a time, and when a software or hardware
issue is encountered, the DHCP services are moved to another failover
cluster host. Deploying services on failover clusters has its own
challenges but can prove to be simpler for a DHCP server deployment if
the server and storage hardware meets all the failover cluster
requirements.
