> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 5:32 PM, Matthew W. Ross > <[email protected]> wrote: > > I'd be happy to use multiple dhcp servers, but support becomes a pain if > you cannot > > find a computer's IP address. > > Please explain what you mean by "cannot find a computer's IP > address". As in, the computer can't get a lease, or your own records > don't show what it should be, or the name doesn't resolve properly, > or...?
All too often, netbios doesn't resolve. Actually, it's more likely that I don't have the correct Netbios name of the machine. So, the foolproof way to get to a machine's address for remote support is to contact it by IP... > I'm not sure what the Microsoft DHCP server can do beyond what's in > the management GUI, but I know with the ISC DHCP server, you can do > all sorts of cool things. So if you're looking for > redundancy/failover/etc., you may want to check that out. It's not > point-and-drool, but it's very powerful. Scripting, multiple database > backends, even just a simple rsync of the leases file to another > machine might be useful to you. In our school, we use the Windows DHCP server. If you reserve a machine, you can leave information in the Description field. We place the asset tag in that field... If a laptop has an asset tag of 1234, the wired reservation's description is entered as "1234", while the wireless is entered as "1234w". Since the DHCP Snap-in can be sorted by columns, we sort by that Description field, and find our clients' IP that way. It's extremely easy, which is why we have opted for this method. So when a problem occurs on a remote machine, all we need is the asset tag of the machine, and we can usually remotely fix the problem. It's a good thing(TM) for us, as we are too few for so many computers. > > Netbios names are not always what you expect them to be. > > Again I'm not sure if you mean "expect them to be" as an > administrative or technical problem. If your records are simply not > as good as you'd like, I can't help much with that. :) I agree. If I could have a better solution, it would be the equivalent of Mac's Remote Desktop tool. I'm not sure how they do computer discovery and name resolution (Bonjour?) but it's very fast. They have a nice view of all the computers it can see, and allows you to search for any information. Searching for an asset tag, active program, or logged in user is all possible... while there doesn't seem to be anything like this for Windows. > But if you mean NetBIOS names don't always resolve properly, some tips: > > (1) Use WINS servers. Without WINS, you're dependent on broadcasts > for name resolution. Agreed. > (2) Set the NetBIOS node type to 0x2 P-node (peer). This means WINS > only, never broadcasts. This can be done via DHCP. Interesting... I'll read on this. > (3) Prevent computers from attempting to become the browse master on > all but a few reliable nodes (e.g., servers selected for the task). We used to do this with a linux box and samba, by giving the samba box a extremely high OS code (I don't think that's what it's called) which means it always won the election. > > > Basically, I think what I want is a good up-to-the-moment inventory > system. > > Yah, we all want that. :) > > -- Ben > Would be nice. Sm:)e. --Matt ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
