Failover for network services?

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nitrobass24

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - December 2009
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So i have two identical servers that i have built at home for folding@home.
One is purely F@H, and the other runs F@H and AD/DNS/DHCP/File services/hyper-v. I dont really need AD at home, but this is [H] and i wanted to learn the basics. :)

Quakecon is in two weeks and i have decided im going to put my 5870 in my server and take it. The only problem is this will kill my home network, which cant happen.

So i realize i can add another AD server, but what about DHCP and DNS failover? From what i have read having two DNS servers on the same network causes issues.

I am a total newb at setting up this stuff so your help is appreciated.
 
You can have two DNS servers no problem. Two DHCP servers is an issue. You can always just setup DHCP, but have it disabled and just enable it when you take down the server.
 
ahhh, that makes sense. So then do large enterprises really only run one DHCP server?
 
There are some solutions to provide DHCP redundancy, but in practice I haven't seen anyone use one. I don't think DHCP is all that mission critical. I mean, most servers are static, so clients would be the ones effected but server to server traffic would not notice. Depending on your lease time clients could even go hours without DHCP up.
 
During one of my Windows Admin classes, the teacher was high up in Infrastructure Operations at a very large health care company.

He shared that they do only have a single DHCP server and the leases are backed up every hour or something along those lines. They keep a standby server that can come up along with the backup file of all the leases and they go on their way.

I guess this is a lot easier for them than most companies seeing as they have a fully staffed 24/7 NOC that can do this kind of changeover quickly.
 
CaseyBlackburn said:
You can have two DNS servers no problem. Two DHCP servers is an issue. You can always just setup DHCP, but have it disabled and just enable it when you take down the server.
Click to expand...

Most places run two DHCP servers running a 80/20 split on the scopes. Thats the only way to do it without getting into dedicated DHCP devices
 
k1pp3r said:
Most places run two DHCP servers running a 80/20 split on the scopes. Thats the only way to do it without getting into dedicated DHCP devices
Click to expand...

I never thought of splitting the scopes. Thats a good idea.
 
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