DHCP Service and WINS Service resource types

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Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

DHCP Service and WINS Service resource types

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) provide network services to clients. DHCP leases Internet protocol (IP) addresses to clients. This lets you centrally manage IP addresses and related configuration details. For more information on DHCP, see DHCP. WINS provides a dynamic database service that can register and resolve NetBIOS names to IP addresses used on your network. For more information on WINS, see WINS.

Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition and Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition provide resource types that allow you to manage DHCP and WINS services in a cluster. Each of these resources stores a database on disk. In order for these resources to fail over, the database must be kept on a disk that is on cluster storage.

You must configure a location for the DHCP and WINS database files and for the backup of these files.

The path to the DHCP or WINS database files and backup of these files must:

  • End with a backslash (\).

  • Use a drive letter of a disk resource on which the DHCP or WINS resource depends.

  • Cannot begin with systemroot, although you can use other environment variables.

The path for the DHCP or WINS database will be of the form f:\dhcp\ or f:\wins\.

The path to the backup of the DHCP database files will be of the form f:\dhcp\backup\.

For WINS, you provide a root path, and the backup of the WINS database files is created in a subdirectory of this path. The path will be of the form f:\wins\.