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Server 2012 R2

I get that error message when clicking next in the Failover Wizard after specifying the partner server, but I don't understand it.

In trying to research how to setup a failover DHCP the one thing I didn't understand or find was the name and range of the scopes between the primary and failover DHCP server.

Initially I thought the failover scope should be the same as the regular scope, so I set everything up the same on the second DHCP, but obviously that was incorrect. Then I used a different name and different range, but it still showed the same error. I can't find anything to explain what I should have setup.

Can someone clear that up for me?

Added after initial post:

The range on my primary DHCP server is 192.168.3.100 to 192.168.3.199.

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  • Honestly, I was really disappointed the first time I researched how Windows Server handles DHCP failover. You'd think with all the other replication stuff going on for Active Directory, DHCP lease information would be there, too, and both servers could be active at the same time. Instead, you need to have ranges large enough to hold an entire xtra set of devices for each additional server, each server only hands out addresses in their own part of the range, and you have failover servers just a wait a few moments before handing out an address, to give the primary a chance.
    – Joel Coel
    Jul 17, 2015 at 23:07
  • But that was for an older version of Windows Server. Hopefully they've improved things in recent versions.
    – Joel Coel
    Jul 17, 2015 at 23:09
  • I think my struggle is understanding what makes a Scope ID different. All of the examples I found talk about Scopes independently. For ex, setting up your first DHCP obviously goes over that Scope. But then the articles on setting up the failover talk about the failover scope, without referencing what the first DHCP's server was setup as. So it's not easy to get the relationship between the 2 because none of the examples I found make it clear and easy to see the 1st and 2nd DHCP server configurations.
    – Alan
    Jul 17, 2015 at 23:12
  • Different scopes correspond to different subnets/vlans. Failover scopes go on different servers.
    – Joel Coel
    Jul 18, 2015 at 1:22

1 Answer 1

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While this answer is simple I'm posting it here because if anyone else attempts a DHCP failover setup as I did and they received this error, then hopefully this will help them.

Sometimes it's not apparent on the web pages showing a failover configuration that the 'Configure Failover' wizard is not run from the DHCP server that will be the 'failover server'.

The 'Configure failover' wizard should be run from the DHCP server that is looking to have a 'failover server' partner.

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