Evaluate This–DHCP Failover

Having looked at how NIC teaming makes the best use of your network card in my last video I wanted to explore another networking feature in Windows Server 2012, DHCP Failover..

You might be wondering why this matters given that split scopes have been around for ages and you can also create a DHCP role in a windows cluster.  The clustering option requires shared storage to work whereas in DHCP failover in Windows Server 2012 all you need is a shared secret (a password).  Split scopes might mean you run out of IP address on one node and there is no high availability as such.  Whereas in DHCP failover you can either split the IP address allocation, or use one of the server as a hot standby.

Given that you can only have setup two server in a DHCP Failover configuration like this I would see this as a great solution for smaller organisations who can’t justify running a cluster for this workload, but need some resilience for key services like DHCP.

If you want to try it do refer to parts 1 & 2 of this series to setup your demo rig. and for more details on DHCP failover you may also wish to check out TechNet here