DHCP Question...

Forgive my ignorance...

A interviewer asked me today: What is DHCP? I told him...it issues IP addresses to clients/workstations/whatever. He said "what else?" Honestly, I don't know.

So...what else?

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Asif Dasl

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol - DNS configuration, WINS, gateway, subnet mask, NTP server usage... just a few that come to mind.

Success101

Asif Dasl wrote: »

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol - DNS configuration, WINS, gateway, subnet mask, NTP server usage... just a few that come to mind.

Pfft. I thought that was common sense. I just made myself look like a complete newbie.

Asif Dasl

I wouldn't worry about it. Maybe if you had said "IP configuration" instead of "IP addresses" he might have moved on to the next question. Who knows? You got its most important role correct anyways.

DoubleNNs

I think he wanted to see how well you understood it's working and whether you've ever troubleshot an issue w/ it.

Anything else probably would have sufficed - lease times, pools, servers/routers, what the acronym stands for, any problem you've experienced w/ it in the past. The easiest thing would have been to simply contrast it w/ static addressing and then describe the advantages and disadvantages of DHCP - which honestly was probably the meat of what they were looking for.

That being said, not going in depth w/ that one question probably wasn't too big of a deal.

Edit: And as Asif alluded to, you could have described what type of info DHCP configures. It's main purpose is to dole out IP addresses, but it also gives out other info, such as the subnet mask, default gateway, DNS server, etc.

ashokbabusingu

DHCP: Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. DHCP using DORE Process it will assign the IP address Automatically.

jso

As long as you didn't answer the question in a smartass way, a short answer thats to the point will always beat someone who rambles on.

Asif Dasl

ashokbabusingu wrote: »

DHCP: Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. DHCP using DORE Process it will assign the IP address Automatically.

Actually it is the D.O.R.A. process - Discover, Offer, Request & Acknowledgement

hexem

Depending on the job role if you answered the question to me like that I would also probably think you have had no experience with it, it's a key networking component that you need to be able to understand.

Clearwaterms

Success101 wrote: »

Forgive my ignorance...

A interviewer asked me today: What is DHCP? I told him...it issues IP addresses to clients/workstations/whatever. He said "what else?" Honestly, I don't know.

So...what else?

When I perform technical interviews, I always present people a problem, and ask them to work through the problem. The goal is that I want to hear what tools they would use to work through a problem.

For example, in the support roles, one of the worst DHCP problems that we used to see was rogue DHCP servers (people bringing in home wifi routers to increase port density) These would start issuing DHCP addresses and if you have a large flat network, it can be a nightmare to track down the device.

During an interview one time, I got a technical question that was phrased like this: "One of the domains in our environment has a AD-DS server that is also a role holder and the role holder has crashed, what would you do to restore the server"

I answered it by saying the most important part is to restore service, so seize the roles in question on a new DC and once the DC is determined down, work through the problem on the server.

I was told that was the wrong answer and that I needed to work through the problem to resolve the server boot issue and users were impacted until we repaired the server.

I told him that was a poor infrastructure design. Safe it to say that 2 days later i received a call that I wasn't an ideal candidate.

Balantine

Clearwaterms wrote: »

When I perform technical interviews, I always present people a problem, and ask them to work through the problem. The goal is that I want to hear what tools they would use to work through a problem.

For example, in the support roles, one of the worst DHCP problems that we used to see was rogue DHCP servers (people bringing in home wifi routers to increase port density) These would start issuing DHCP addresses and if you have a large flat network, it can be a nightmare to track down the device.

During an interview one time, I got a technical question that was phrased like this: "One of the domains in our environment has a AD-DS server that is also a role holder and the role holder has crashed, what would you do to restore the server"

I answered it by saying the most important part is to restore service, so seize the roles in question on a new DC and once the DC is determined down, work through the problem on the server.

I was told that was the wrong answer and that I needed to work through the problem to resolve the server boot issue and users were impacted until we repaired the server.

I told him that was a poor infrastructure design. Safe it to say that 2 days later i received a call that I wasn't an ideal candidate.

My understanding is that your answer is/was wrong because after seizing FSMO you can't re-add the server: you have to rebuild it. Sometimes this is the way to go, sometimes not. I think the answer the interviewer wanted to hear was something about directory services restore mode or documentation/drivers, offline event logs, crash **** analysis, hardware troubleshooting, backups, etc.

Clearwaterms

Balantine wrote: »

My understanding is that your answer is/was wrong because after seizing FSMO you can't re-add the server: you have to rebuild it. Sometimes this is the way to go, sometimes not. I think the answer the interviewer wanted to hear was something about directory services restore mode or documentation/drivers, offline event logs, crash **** analysis, hardware troubleshooting, backups, etc.

You are correct - except that MS does have a way to do a recovery...

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/512ccfe0-134a-4ef5-b40c-cb44ba89912b/after-fsmo-seizure-is-once-dead-dc-off-the-domain

Run dcpromo /forceremoval on Windows Server 2008 DC or re-install it

Do a metadata cleanup: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc736378(v=ws.10).aspx

Promote again the Windows Server 2008 DC and make it a DNS and GC server

Transfer FSMO roles to the Windows Server 2008 DC

Balantine

Clearwaterms wrote: »

You are correct - except that MS does have a way to do a recovery...

After FSMO Seizure is once dead DC off the Domain?

[/LIST]

Neat.

With SBS, however, oftentimes the DC has other roles and services. Like file share and Exchange.

I agree that best practice design is to have more than one DC.