Hi, i greatly appreciate dhcp failover function of MS server 2012. I just have a few questions to it.

what happens if the primary server fails pertaining that our dhcp-relay agent is pointing only to the primary server?
the scopes are replicated though, but the secondary server has a different ip address. is there an HA solution where we could implement a virtual IP address for 2 dhcp servers. we could then point that address to our dhcp relay agent. 

What are you using as a DHCP-Relay Agent?

Some agents will allow you to put in multiple IP addresses for your DHCP servers.

You need to make sure that the DHCP relay as the 2 servers if they don't the client will never reach the second one.

Hi Regie,

If you have configured DHCP failover, we could configure two DHCP servers on relay agent.

When one DHCP server is unavailable, the other DHCP server could still offer IP addresses for the subnet.

Best Regards,

Leo

Hi Leo,

Thank you. i actually have 2 dhcp relay agents. one is cisco & other is Huawei. In cisco i can point multiple dhcp server in the relay agent, no problem. But with huawei i can only point 1 dhcp server. I was thinking if there's a way we could set 1 virtual IP address for the two MS 2012 dhcp failover servers. Please let me know if you know a way.

Thank you.

Best Regards,

Regie

• Marked as answer by Regie Maru 39 minutes ago
• Unmarked as answer by Regie Maru 39 minutes ago

Hi Regie,

As far as I know, we could not configure such a virtual IP address.

About the configuration of Huawei device, we could contact the technical support team for help.

Here is the link:
http://support.huawei.com/support/index.jsp?colID=ROOTENWEB

Best Regards,

Leo

Hi Leo,

Thank you. i will try to ask for huawei support,Thanks for the advice. one more thing,  can we automate the replication of address releases & the reservation? Sorry to bother you this much, but  please let me know your thoughts. 

Best regards,

Regie

Hi Regie,

In Server 2012, with DHCP failover, Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) scopes with associated leases, reservations, options, and settings, are shared by two Windows DHCP servers.

Here is the reference for DHCP failover:
Understand and Deploy DHCP Failover:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn338978.aspx

Best Regards,

Leo