The DHCP Server service automatically performs a backup of the DHCP database and DHCP Server registry configuration key every 60 minutes (and overwrites the previous back up). You can also perform a manual backup as outlined in the GUI solution. Backup files are stored in %SystemRoot%\system32\dhcp\backup by default, but you can change that location as described in the CLI solution. You should change this path to another drive so that a disk failure doesn’t impact both the active database and the backup files.

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Based on your disk configuration, the default location for the DHCP Server database and audit logs may not be sufficient. In any case, you are better off moving these paths off of the system drive, especially if you have multiple disks on the server. In a high-load scenario, disk access to the DHCP database can have an impact on DHCP response times. If you can move the database and logs to a separate disk, the DHCP Server won’t compete with the operating system to access the filesystem.

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After you enable auditing on a DHCP Server, all DHCP requests, database maintenance events, and various errors will be logged to a file. By default, a separate file is generated for each day of the week and stored in %SystemRoot%\system32\dhcp. The files are named DhcpSrvLog-xxx.log where xxx is the day of the week (e.g., DhcpSrvLog-Mon.log). After the first week, the previous week’s file is overwritten.

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In some situations, it is not ideal to let hosts obtain an IP address dynamically. For example, web servers need to be referable by a friendly hostname (e.g., www.xiitec.com), which is associated with an IP address. If that IP address changes, the DNS record for the hostname also needs to change. The propagation delay while the record is updated could result in some clients getting errors when trying to access the web site. The solution for this, and any other server with DNS dependency, is to create a reservation.

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If you delete a lease, you’ll also need to make sure the client isn’t actively using that IP address anymore. Simply deleting the lease on the DHCP Server makes that lease available again for other clients to use. It doesn’t actually do anything to the client itself. You can release a lease on the client by running ipconfig /release. Then run ipconfig /renew to request a new lease.

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