Pabs:
Even if you move DHCP to the router, you'll discover that you have a problem
with DNS lookups. Since DNS is an integral part of Active Directory, your
clients should only be using internal DNS servers that have the various AD
SRV records. So in a single-server environment, when SBS goes down, so does
DNS, and if the clients are configured properly, so does their ability to do
name resolution...even if DHCP was moved. Adding non-AD DNS servers
introduces other problems where clients can't find AD services.
First, I need to say that in a well designed system, SBS shouldn't be going
down often enough for this to even be an issue. With dual-power supplies,
RAID SAS systems, etc, you can schedule maintenance during non-business
hours, and almost every other "common" hardware failure has redundancies. So
if you are having problems with this regularly, my *first* recommendation is
to look at *why* SBS is down in the first place. It may be time to adjust
some hardware purchasing practices or maintenance (patch management, etc)
practices.
With that said, sometimes things really do happen. A mainboard fails and
isn't redundant, and a business wants to plan for that. There are two
common solutions to this.
1) Install a second windows server (SBS premium is good for this) and make
it a DC. It'll offer redundant DNS and login at this point and the SBS
cal's already cover it. You can even configure it to offer DHCP as well if
you want, doing split-zone DHCP configuration is trivial. Although in most
configurations I'd consider it unnecessary.
2) For companies that don't have the budget for a windows server, I have in
rare instances set up a linux machine running BIND and configured it as a
slave of the SBS server. SBS supports standard zone notificatoins so the AD
stuff is kept intact on the BIND slave. In general though, for small
businesses where SBS is found, they don't have a person with the skillset to
maintain such a box on their own. So cost of out-sourced maintenance
(usually me) quickly outpaces the cost of just installing a second windows
server...so as I said before...RARE instances...but it is always an option.
-Cliff
"Pabs" <> wrote in message
news:40d748cc-9680-41b2-a552-...
> Hi, typically the SBS server would be handing out DHCP addresses.
> However I'm wondering if the router should be the one handing out DHCP
> addresses. For example, a colleague of mine had their SBS 2003 server
> go down due to a hardware issue. Now no one in the office can access
> the Internet. If the router was the DHCP server, I believe they'd
> have Internet access right now from their workstations. Any thoughts
> or experiences on this? Thanks.
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