Recipe14.6.Creating a Superscope

Recipe 14.6. Creating a Superscope

Problem

You want to create a superscope, which allows you to manage multiple scopes on the same physical network.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

1. Open the DHCP snap-in.

2. In the left pane, right-click on DHCP and select Add Server.

3. Type the name of the DHCP Server you want to target and click OK.

4. Right-click the server in the left pane and select New Superscope. This option will display only if there are scopes configured that have not been added to a superscope yet.

5. Click Next to begin the New Superscope Wizard.

6. Enter a name for the superscope and click Next.

7. Select the scopes to add to the superscope and click Next.

8. Click Finish.

Using a command-line interface

The following command creates a superscope named "Building 5" and adds the scope identified by subnet 192.168.1.0 to it:

> netsh dhcp server scope 192.168.1.0 set superscope "Building 5" 1

The following command displays all the superscopes on a server:

> netsh dhcp server show superscope

The following command deletes the superscope named "Building 5":

> netsh dhcp server delete superscope "Building 5"

Using VBScript

See the Introduction for more information on how to run the netsh command from within a script.

Discussion

Superscopes allow you to manage a collection of scopes as one entity. You can activate or deactivate all the scopes in a superscope at one time and view the combined lease statistics for all scopes in the superscope.

Superscopes are most often used when you need to create a secondary subnet to increase the number of available leases for a particular network. For example, let's say you created a scope for network 10.1.2.0/24 with 250 leases (leaving four IP addresses available for static use). Once the scope runs out of available leases, you can create a secondary subnet that is used on the same physical network. To make that work with the DHCP Server, you have to create a superscope and add the original and secondary scopes to the superscope.

One of the features of a superscope is the ability to activate and deactivate it. When you activate a superscope, it activates all scopes contained within it. And when you deactivate a superscope, it deactivates all scopes.

When you delete a superscope, none of the scopes contained within it are deleted. The scopes will become standalone and not be part of a superscope (unless you add them to another superscope later).

See Also

Recipe 14.5