Like the installation, managing Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server is also easy. Back in my Windows Server 2008Server Manager, under Roles, I clicked on the new DHCP Server entry.
Figure 8: DHCP Server management in Server Manager
While I cannot manage the DHCP Server scopes and clients from here, what I can do is to manage what events, services, and resources are related to the DHCP Server installation. Thus, this is a good place to go to check the status of the DHCP Server and what events have happened around it.
However, to really configure the DHCP Server and see what clients have obtained IP addresses, I need to go to the DHCP Server MMC. To do this, I went to Start à Administrative Tools à DHCP Server, like this:
Figure 9: Starting the DHCP Server MMC
When expanded out, the MMC offers a lot of features. Here is what it looks like:
Figure 10: The Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server MMC
The DHCP Server MMC offers IPv4 & IPv6 DHCP Server info including all scopes, pools, leases, reservations, scope options, and server options.
If I go into the address pool and the scope options, I can see that the configuration we made when we installed the DHCP Server did, indeed, work. The scope IP address range is there, and so are the DNS Server & default gateway.
Figure 11: DHCP Server Address Pool
Figure 12: DHCP Server Scope Options
So how do we know that this really works if we do not test it? The answer is that we do not. Now, let’s test to make sure it works.
How do we test our Windows Server 2008 DHCP Server?
To test this, I have a Windows Vista PC Client on the same network segment as the Windows Server 2008 DHCP server. To be safe, I have no other devices on this network segment.
I did an IPCONFIG /RELEASE then an IPCONFIG /RENEW and verified that I received an IP address from the new DHCP server, as you can see below:
Figure 13: Vista client received IP address from new DHCP Server
Also, I went to my Windows 2008 Server and verified that the new Vista client was listed as a client on the DHCP server. This did indeed check out, as you can see below:
Figure 14: Win 2008 DHCP Server has the Vista client listed under Address Leases
With that, I knew that I had a working configuration and we are done!
