First, thanks for all of the feedback. Some interesting opinions out there. I've always been open to change so it's good to hear all of the positives/negatives regarding which route to take. It sounds like DHCP would be the way to go with the majority of our servers, excluding the infrastructure servers.
With that said, it's probably a change that will occur through attrition rather than changing our current method all at once. The main reason for that is our network services department wants us to change the subnets our servers currently reside on to further segment stuff. We've got way too much work on our plates to investigate changing the addresses on all of our servers so that will already be a slow transition. In the meantime, a co-worker and I put together what we hope is a functional VB script that will make the necessary changes to the existing WINs and DNS settings. If anyone's interested in seeing it (and maybe reviewing it for validity), I'd be happy to pass it along. - Sean On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 1:41 PM, Ben Scott <mailvor...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 4:24 PM, Sean Martin <seanmarti...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > What are some of the pros/cons of using DHCP for servers...? > > For an environment like you describe, with hundreds of servers, I > would recommend DHCP for all but critical network infrastructure > servers. I'd use manual configuration for anything serving DHCP, DNS, > WINS, or Active Directory. Everything else, DHCP, with reservations. > > Just to be clear: DHCP does not have to mean a dynamic IP address. > You can statically assign an IP address via a DHCP reservation. And > there are tools to help you do things like automatically provision the > reservations, based on name or MAC address or whatever. > > > I've heard mention of not using DHCP to prevent DHCP broadcasts > > but with a properly designed lease interval, I can't imagine the DHCP > > traffic being that much of burden on today's networks.... > > As ME2 says, it really depends on the environment, but I would > generally agree. You'll already be needing infrastructure to support > DNS, prolly Active Directory, possibly WINS, Window Updates, etc., > etc. If DHCP is going to push you over the edge you're already way > too close to the edge. :) > > The one thing you *may* notice is a surge in broadcast traffic after > rebooting or starting a large group of servers -- say, after a > software update, or a long power outage. In general, though, you're > already going to be seeing that due to ARP and maybe NetBIOS > registration. So again, if this is a problem you're likely already > experiencing it. The usual solution is to stagger reboot/startup. > > -- Ben > > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ > ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ > ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
