DHCP for Windows 2000

Chapter 11. Monitoring and Troubleshooting DHCP

Now the DHCP server is up and running, DHCP clients are requesting and receiving DHCP offers, and everyone is happy. One way to keep everyone happy is to monitor the health of the DHCP service and to quickly troubleshoot and resolve any potential DHCP problems.

Monitoring DHCP in Windows 2000 is a vast improvement over previous versions of Windows NT. By monitoring, an administrator can be notified if a DHCP server is being overloaded or if it is experiencing other difficulties.

When DHCP is up and running, it is pretty much transparent. An administrator could go months without having any problems. However, when problems do crop up, an administrator must turn to his toolbox to troubleshoot the situation.

Monitoring DHCP

One of the new features found in Windows 2000 is the ability to monitor DHCP servers. The DHCP service is a critical component in a network environment and as such needs to be monitored to ensure it is operating at peak performance.

Windows 2000 also includes the ability to enable audit logging for the DHCP server.

Using System Monitor

Windows 2000 supplies a set of counters that are used to monitor different aspects of the DHCP server. These counters track items such as the following:

• The average time it takes the DHCP server to process a DHCP request

• The number of messages (divided by the type of DHCP message) per second the DHCP server receives

• The number of packets dropped because the DHCP server was too busy to handle ...