DHCP advice requied

[ScottishFencer]

Hi Guys,

I need to pick your brains.

At the moment I am running a network with static IPs. This leads to quite a bit of annoying admin when new boxes are installed and I want to enable DHCP over the network. The problem is that I can't decide which option to go for:

option 1: Enable DHCP on the Firewall. I have a Sonicwall Firewall and it has a DHCP component I could activate.
option 2: There is a DHCP server installed on one of the comms servers (it's w2k server) but that one is battered around quite a bit already. It hosts: a file sharing partition, Exhchange and a print server.

Option 3: I have a DB server. I would be reluctant to put anything on this server as it is the one that is utlised the most. It hosts the in-house server for our DB apps. They are not big DBs, but the server is hit hard.

What do you guys think?

I am inclining towards option 1, as it is the piece of equipment that is hit the least.

 

[nsantin]

Where is you DNS? If using MS DNS, go with option 2, a lot of firewall DHCP servers don't integrate well with MS DNS so you may not get records registered properly.

As for load, DHCP is minimal.

 

[ScottishFencer]

Well ok I'll do that. DNS is forwarded to the ISP, it's not dealt with in house.

 

[nsantin]

What do you use for internal name resolution? Are you using WINS? or are you using a host file on all the clients?

 

[Seaspray0]

If you are in a domain environment, you must have a DNS server. This is the DNS you should be pointing your clients to and your DNS server should forward to the ISP for internet resolutions. There are very important reasons for doing it this way.

As for locating the DHCP, I would have it on a server for management reasons.

A+/MCP/MCSE/MCDBA

 

[ScottishFencer]

Hi,

Yeah I don't actually know why I typed that. Of course we have an MS DNS server set up. I was discussing Internet name resolution with a colleague and must have had it in my head.