I think this depends on one's environment. If you only have a handful of servers, manual configuration is fine, even preferred. If you've got 100 servers, manual configuration is unwieldy at best, and if you ever have to renumber your network, you're in for a lot of work. We manually config our servers, but DHCP our printers.
I always go for static IP addresses for servers, printers, and the like. Only "regular PCs" are in the dynamic address pool. hosts files I don't use. If DNS is down, nothing's working anyway, and DNS will be my first priority. But we're a small shop (2 person IT department). In a large shop, you might have enough people that you'd want them working other issues even if DNS was out. So monitoring by IP address, or with a hosts file, might make sense. Maybe. I don't think I'd ever want to get in to copying hosts files around to *all* servers, though. I can't see that ever being worth the potential troubles. -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to listmana...@lyris.sunbeltsoftware.com with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
