DHCP conflict between 2 Windows 2000 SBS's

Hey,

I got 2 Windows 2000 Small Business Servers connected to my network. First one (from now on Server 1) provides network access to local computers (1 network port connected to WAN and the other one to LAN). So local computers use this server as an gateway. Server 1 also has a FTP server installed on it.

The second Windows 2000 SBS (from now on Server 2), is connected to LAN and provides local computers DHCP service. Server 2 also has network shared hard drives for backups etc.

Now.. The DHCP service on Server 2 dies/stops, because it finds that a DHCP server on Server 1 is running. But there aint a DHCP running on Server 1. I believe there used to be a DHCP server on Server 1. These servers have been running for ages and with the company moving from one place to another, things have changed.

I personal joined the company 2 years ago so I dont know the exact history of what has ran on the servers at one time.

I disabled the DHCP client, DNS client and other services, on Server 1,that I thought could cause the conflict. But nothing seemed to work.

What should I check? What services could cause the problem?

Thanks for your help,
Urho

 

Last I heard you can't have two SBS in the same domain

"You can create and manage only one Windows SBS domain. Windows SBS is designed to make network management as easy as possible. One way it does this is by restricting the Active Directory® directory service so that there can be only one domain, with Windows SBS as the domain controller at the forest's root."


http://technet2.microsoft.com/Windo...2075-4ca0-8af8-99fd04b78b2d1033.mspx?mfr=true

These two servers in different forests?

 

From the post above, that was my experience as well, you can only have one SBS server in a domain...

but, aside from that, if it's worked for years this way, why don't you just install the DHCP services (if they aren't already) on Server1 and duplicate the DHCP scopes from server2 to server1?

any event viewer logs we can see regarding the stopping of the DHCP service on server1/2?

 

Wouldn't this cause a lot of IP conflicts, depending on which DHCP server the client decides to contact first?? Just curious.

 

yes, if both were running at the same time and attempting to serve the exact same scopes.

i guess i should further my response by saying that you should duplicate the scopes, but don't serve the same pool from both servers, set exclusion ranges and ensure that if you have any reservations that they get setup on both servers.

it can never hurt to have two DHCP servers in the event one fails so you have some psuedo-redundancy of your DHCP configuration.

 

Correct, you may want to set one scope up as:

192.168.1.50 - 192.168.1.100

And the other one as:

192.168.1.101 - 192.168.1.200

Anything else below 192.168.1.50, I would use for servers and network devices such as routers, printers, etc. Given the fact that you're running an SBS server, I would gather that you don't have very many clients on your network anyways.

 

So, i decide to go the easy way.

Installed DHCP on Server 1, Authorized it on Server 2. (Server 1 coulnt contact active directory). Disabled DHCP service on Server 2. Just in case it dosent sometime decide to star working

At this stage... Everything seems to be running perfectly.

Thank you all. And i WILL be returning here for my future windows server related problems

 

Allways uninstall things like these and not only disable.

This is recommended by MS as otherwise strange things might happen as it might still be running.

Couldn't belive that when I read it but keep that in mind and allways uninstall, it's so easy to install again as well so no need for these kind of services to coexist, don't have a link to the artical long time ago...


SeYa/Ambrose...